If you wouldn’t be caught dead with a plastic straw, or without your reusable bags at the supermarket, it’s time to talk about your toilet paper.
Traditional toilet paper is an enormous environmental pest. Every day almost 2 million trees are cut down to make loo roll, according to research by environmental impact consultancy Edge, commissioned by toilet paper producer Who Gives A Crap.
Single-use items may be on the out – many of us have ditched plastic bags, straws and cutlery, and embraced the eco-tote and reusable cup – but it’s easy for even the greenest consumer to miss the fact that their bathroom is home to one of the most disposable products on the planet.
The humble loo roll is a major player in the not-so-sustainable product game, lumped in with nasties such as takeaway coffee cups and cotton buds by industry experts such as Sustainability Victoria. Used for a second, flushed for a lifetime.
Around the globe, forests are being logged to make toilet paper products at unsustainable rates. The majority of the industry uses virgin wood pulp as the source for its toilet paper, meaning vast expanses of natural forest are cleared, according to the Edge research.
Large-scale logging contributes to carbon emissions. Trees also help regulate the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions: forests remove about a quarter of the carbon dioxide contributed to the atmosphere by human activity. This means keeping forests untouched and thriving is vital to fighting climate change.
Just a few years ago, the Guardian reported that toilet paper was becoming less sustainable amid the growing popularity of “luxury” loo rolls. Alex Crumbie, a researcher for Ethical Consumer, said: “There is no need to cut down forests to make toilet rolls, yet this is precisely what is happening. With consumer attention focused on plastic, some of the big brands have slowed and even reversed their use of recycled paper in the toilet rolls they make.”
An estimated two thirds of Australian toilet paper and tissue products are made locally, with the rest imported, according to paper trade body Industry Edge.
If you’re seeking absolution from your ablutions, what can be done? It’s not all doom and gloom for eco-friendly folks. Who Gives A Crap offers two options that are forest friendly: recycled rolls, and bamboo rolls. The company is also a certified B Corporation, and donates 50% of profits to clean water and sanitation nonprofits around the world.
Making the change from standard toilet paper – made from virgin wood pulp and sold in plastic packaging – to recycled tissue is one simple action you can take that requires little effort, but can have a huge impact.
Let’s be clear that “recycled” does not mean you might be using loo roll that’s previously received the royal flush. Recycled toilet tissue is typically made from a mix of pre-consumer and post-consumer materials. Pre-consumer content is material left over during the manufacturing process, such as offcuts and scraps that would otherwise be thrown out. Post-consumer content is material that generally had another life as a humble office product, such as printing paper, or written-but-never-sent love letters. Poetic.
Unsurprisingly, recycled toilet paper has significantly less impact on the environment than products made from virgin wood pulp. Crucially, it doesn’t increase demand on our planet’s forests, lessening the impact of commercial logging and clear cutting. Other key benefits? It uses less energy and less toxic chemicals. A 2019 report, The Issue With Tissue, shows that making recycled toilet paper uses about half as much water as the production of virgin wood pulp, and that the chemicals used are far less toxic than those used to bleach virgin wood pulp. That’s a win-win-win.
The best recycled toilet paper comes in biodegradable or recyclable packaging, too, because there’s nothing more annoying than trying to do the right thing by buying a sustainable product and experiencing that sinking feeling when you realise it’s packaged in eight layers of plastic. This is why experts recommend opting for rolls packaged in biodegradable or recyclable materials.
By 2050 our oceans might contain more plastic by weight than fish. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by stats such as these, but making the change to recycled toilet paper can fight waste and climate change. It’s a simple swap to create change from the bottom up.
Shop Who Gives A Crap’s 100% recycled or bamboo toilet paper.
