9 Sustainable Toilet Paper Brands For Your Sweet Cheeks
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The best Eco-Friendly & Sustainable Toilet Paper
When people start switching to a sustainably conscious lifestyle, a commonly shared tip is to work through each room in your house and slowly replace items with their sustainable/reusable counterparts. A good room to start in is the bathroom, and replacing your Charmin has never been so easy. There are seriously dozens of tree-free, low-waste toilet paper options on the market now. Some of the packaging options can even be reused for things like wrapping paper because it’s so vibrant and fun! Talk about getting a two-for-one deal!
Whether you’re looking to switch to bamboo, or try out a bidet, or go all-in for reusable toilet paper, this list should help you get a better idea of where to start and what to look for. Enjoy the go - and know that your toilet paper isn’t wrapped in plastic and harming the earth!
What’s the difference between conventional toilet paper and sustainable Toilet Paper?
The number one (haha) difference is trees. According to the NRDC’s Issue With Tissue report from 2019, this “destructive ‘tree-to-toilet pipeline’ does massive harm to Indigenous Peoples and iconic species” especially surrounding the Boreal Forest in Canada. First off, yes, that is in fact a real report and yes, it has a totally awesome name. Second, cutting down massive stretches of forests around the world won’t help anyone in the long run. Deforestation needs to stop. It’s as simple as that.
Our society has been able to develop tree-free toilet paper utilizing sustainable materials like bamboo, which is incredibly fast-growing. Bamboo can be harvested annually and doesn’t need to be replanted each time, which helps maintain healthy soil. In addition to its regenerative nature, bamboo requires less water than trees and produces more oxygen. Bamboo is one of those super materials that Mother Nature shows off with, like cork.
If you are going to use toilet paper that comes from trees, make it recycled tree paper! And if you’re wondering, no, recycled toilet paper doesn’t come from used toilet paper. It actually comes from post-consumer paper, like office paper. Recycling will only create a lasting and positive change if companies are actually buying recycled materials to create new products, so if you see that the material is “post-consumer” you know you’re encouraging the recycling industry to do what it should be doing!
Bamboo and recycled paper options do exactly the same job, but they don’t destroy ecosystems at the same time. If you’re interested, you can read more about the Issue With Tissue report here.
So is tree-free the only way to switch it up in the bathroom?
There are in fact more options than just recycled paper or bamboo paper. We can be so much more creative than cutting down trees to wipe our butts! America is trailing behind most countries when it comes to bidets. These devices are used widely throughout Asia and Europe, and they help cut down on toilet paper usage significantly. If your rolls are lasting longer, you’re buying less T.P. and saving money in the long run!
Plus, bidets are actually *way* more hygienic than using regular toilet paper. I mean, really think about toilet paper for a minute. Using a dry sheet of paper to cover our hands while we wipe away down there. Why is this super westernized idea promoted as the most hygienic? *Cough* Profit in the deforestation/toilet paper industry *Cough* Instead, think outside the corporate box and pair your bidet with a sustainable toilet paper option for a win-win situation!
Another option that some may see as a bit more “nuclear” is reusable toilet paper. If it’s not for you, that’s fine, but don’t roll your eyes at it. This is also the most affordable of all the options because you can DIY be repurposing old fabric in your home, like t-shirts. It is recommended to store used cloth strips in a container and wash them every 2-3 days. Make sure to wash the items on hot. If you want an extra level of cleanliness, you can also pre-soak your cloth strips in a vinegar mixture, or use bleach when washing.
We’re on a roll (ha!) so here are 9 Eco-Friendly & sustainable toilet paper brands!
1) Reel
Price | 24 Rolls for $37
This 100% bamboo toilet paper is shipped in biodegradable, plastic-free packaging.
Reel partners with SOIL, a company that has been working in Haiti since 2006 to transform waste into resources. This partnership provides toilets to communities that lack them and then collects and treats the waste to transform it into compost. Once this waste becomes a useful commodity, it is sold to support agriculture, reforestation, and climate change mitigation amongst Haitian communities.
2) Seedling by Grove
Price | 24 Rolls for $27
Grove Collaborative is a B-corp-certified online hub for healthier and more eco-friendly household essentials, including bamboo toilet paper.
Every Seedling order means a tree planted, and so far Grove has helped plant 653,000 trees and counting across the U.S. in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, with their overall goal to plant 1 million trees by 2022. Their bamboo, like other brands on this list, is grown in China on family farms. Since bamboo is native to China, it doesn’t require any fertilizer to prosper, further making it a better replacement for trees.
3) Who Gives A Crap
Price | 24 Rolls for $38+
Founded in 2013, this B-corp-certified company is on a mission to help build toilets and improve sanitation around the world.
50% of profits are donated to accomplishing this goal, so your roll goes a long way, and so far Who Gives A Crap has raised over $10 million.
In addition to raising funds and making brightly colored wrappers for their rolls, they also partner with WASH, an initiative focused on bringing water, sanitation, and hygiene to all.
They work with companies like SHOFCO to create innovative ways to make water accessible to people who usually have to travel upwards of 30 minutes one way to obtain water for their families, and Lwala, which installs handwashing stations stocked with soap in rural communities.
4) Plant Paper
Price | 16 Rolls for $37
Plant Paper’s bamboo is FSC-certified and organically grown and harvested in China.
If you’re wondering about the carbon emissions from shipping materials from China to the States, so was I. But even with the additional carbon emissions from shipping bamboo paper, using a bamboo alternative like Plante Paper is still *three times* less harmful to the environment than using toilet paper made from trees. Three. Times. So, it’s definitely time to make the switch.
5) Cloud Paper
Price | 24 Rolls for $35
To this date, Cloud Paper has saved over 25k trees using bamboo. They have also planted over 5k trees thanks to their customers.
Their bamboo is sourced from responsibly-managed forests in regions where it grows natively, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Your rolls are delivered in a 100% post-consumer recycled box with plastic-free packing that is entirely compostable or recyclable.
6) No. 2
Price | 24 Rolls for $46
This bamboo-using company was founded in 2018 and is Responsible Forestry Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Each roll is individually wrapped in recycled paper that uses soy ink to print fun patterns that don’t need to hide under the bathroom sink!
No. 2 harvests their bamboo from the Sichuan province in China and ships from their warehouses in California and Nevada.
7) Trader Joe’s Bath Tissue
This super accessible toilet paper option ranked “A” in the NRDC’s updated “Issues with Tissues 2.0” report.
This 2020 version of the original report (mentioned earlier), ranks some of the major brands in toilet paper on a grade scale of A-F. Having such an accessible sustainable option is fantastic, but if you are utilizing this option, but make sure to avoid Trader Joe’s *Super Soft* Bath Tissue, which actually earned a “D” ranking. Yikes.
8) Tushy
If you’re looking for a different alternative to just bamboo or recycled toilet paper, let me introduce the bidet! For anyone wondering about water usage with bidets, just know that producing *one* roll of conventional toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water while using a bidet only uses about a pint for each wash. The numbers speak for themselves.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, when Americans had an issue with hoarding their tissues, a brand called Tushy entered the space and offered people a different option. This company makes easy-to-install, sleek bidets and “puts their money where their butt is”, too, by partnering with Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) projects as they work toward carbon neutrality.
Tushy also has a line of Premium Bamboo Toilet Paper.
9) Marley’s Monsters
And last, but certainly not least, we have a reusable toilet paper option from Marley’s Monsters. This product was also created in reaction to the sudden toilet paper shortage in 2020 and has been a hit amongst consumers since. This product is made from 100% cotton flannel for a truly soft wipe and is handmade in Eugene, Oregon. They offer detailed care instructions on their website, and since the fabric isn’t pre-washed, it becomes more absorbent with each use. Marley’s Monsters is a family-founded company focused on bringing reusable options to households everywhere. All fabric waste is donated locally to create new products, like hair accessories.
About the Author
Paige Annelayne is a freelance writer and digital media specialist currently based in Alabama, who loves to cook, learn about intersectional sustainability, and read a lot of books. Her cat, Gnocchi, her plants, and a good cup of matcha bring her joy. You can connect with Paige on Instagram @vitality.blog and at www.vtltyblog.com
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