I think paper is perfectly fine for most people who do not have certain medical problems, given a few prerequisites.
The main one is diet. Eat enough fiber so it's not a mess in the first place. This has many other benefits too. The next in priority is wet wipes. I strongly prefer them, and they are portable unlike a bidet. They are super useful while away from the toilet as well. After that there's technique. I am confident that the people who complain about paper and wet wipes are simply wiping way too hard causing chafing or even fissures. I don't want to get too graphic, but you also need to "relax" a bit down there for the most thorough job instead of just a surface level wipe. Normal paper first for removal of the "bulk material" and wet wipes for the residue.
That's it folks! If you do all this right, washing your hands afterwards shouldn't need so much effort either.
Bonus tip: why not just carry a little atomizer bottle filled with water so you can make your own wet wipes in a pinch? The spray is gentle enough to not completely saturate and ruin even the thinnest and cheapest toilet paper you find in the wild, and such a spray bottle is again very useful away from the toilet.
Yeah, if something comes wet in a package, it means it isn't going to dissolve in water, and at the end of the day is like flushing pieces of cloth down the toilet and will cause problems somewhere down the line.
Ass tons of people still do it though,and without legislation to prevent marketing it as fine, it is mostly municipal sewage, and thus everyone overall, that will pay for the additional maintenance caused by the few.
Do they need to post sources for every possible municipality? Los Angeles is actually a very definitive source on them being bad for sanitation systems. LA is a pretty young city, they really don't have any terribly ancient sewage systems. There were apparently still wooden pipes in service in Philly in 2017 [0], probably there still are some in service right now. LA's oldest infrastructure could conceivably be from the 1860s, and realistically their oldest infrastructure would be from the 1910s. If their sanitation district advises against it, why would we expect older cities like NYC or Baltimore to fare better?
So I’m of the same opinion minus the wet wipes due to the obvious hazards. But if your diet is fine, there’s literally only what they call “ghost poop”.
It’s baffling to me, really. Also, it’s your anus, 99.9999% clean is also ok.
The main one is diet. Eat enough fiber so it's not a mess in the first place. This has many other benefits too. The next in priority is wet wipes. I strongly prefer them, and they are portable unlike a bidet. They are super useful while away from the toilet as well. After that there's technique. I am confident that the people who complain about paper and wet wipes are simply wiping way too hard causing chafing or even fissures. I don't want to get too graphic, but you also need to "relax" a bit down there for the most thorough job instead of just a surface level wipe. Normal paper first for removal of the "bulk material" and wet wipes for the residue.
That's it folks! If you do all this right, washing your hands afterwards shouldn't need so much effort either.
Bonus tip: why not just carry a little atomizer bottle filled with water so you can make your own wet wipes in a pinch? The spray is gentle enough to not completely saturate and ruin even the thinnest and cheapest toilet paper you find in the wild, and such a spray bottle is again very useful away from the toilet.