How to buy more sustainable toilet paper
Most toilet roll is made with virgin wood pulp. But how sustainable is it, and what alternative options are out there? We've dug into the facts to help you decide what to buy.
Most of us give little thought to its origins, but the journey that toilet paper takes to get from tree to U-bend deserves a bit more consideration.
The majority of the toilet roll we buy in the UK is made out of virgin wood. But is that really necessary for something we use so fleetingly?
We look into the options available to help you make this single-use disposable product a more sustainable purchase.
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What is toilet paper made out of?
The big brands you'll find in the supermarket often rely on virgin timber for their toilet paper. Much of the material used comes from specifically farmed plantation softwood (often from Northern Europe or North America) and hardwood (often eucalyptus from South America).
Plantations can be well-managed and sustainably harvested – but when they are not, they can cause significant problems.
Eucalyptus grows quickly and makes good quality paper; it can also, when grown irresponsibly, have significant detrimental environmental impact. The trees are water-hungry and can cause droughts; they’re flammable – a danger to native forests they often adjoin, and it’s not a native plant in South America where it's grown, which can threaten native biodiversity.
Most big brands and supermarket brands carry toilet roll that's certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). It's usually given FSC Mix certification, which helps to mitigate against some of these issues by using a mixture of sustainably grown timber and controlled wood (wood with a low risk of being illegal, genetically modified or that threatens existing forests). However FSC Mix is a less rigorous standard than FSC 100% because it only provides assurance rather than full auditing of all the wood.
For more on identifying FSC timber and paper products and what its certification scheme means, read out guide to buying more sustainable furniture.
Even when it carries certification, virgin wood pulp is a limited and precious resource. Global demand for timber for paper products is ever increasing, so it's important to protect the world's remaining forests as much as we can. Environmental non-profit organisation, Canopy, has suggested that we need to reduce our global reliance on new wood pulp by 50%.
NGOs including the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which publishes an annual report on toilet tissue sustainability, and campaigning organisation and publication, Ethical Consumer all agree that virgin timber doesn’t need to be used for a product that’s headed straight for the sewer.
‘Major tissue manufacturers are failing consumers and the planet by using large volumes of virgin wood pulp to make the ultimate disposable product,’ says Ashley Jordan from the NRDC.
When it comes to swapping out our everyday purchases for more sustainable alternatives, toilet paper feels like a good place to start.
Alternative fibres
Toilet paper doesn't have to be made of wood.
Over recent years, some small brands have emerged offering toilet rolls composed of bamboo fibre. The best known of these include The Cheeky Panda and Who Gives a Crap (WGAC).
Bamboo grows very quickly and can be ready for harvest in around four years. Harvesting doesn't destroy its root system and it can regenerate easily without stripping soil of its nutrients. If grown responsibly, it requires little water and pesticide use.
However, it can still be grown unsustainably. Replacing natural forest with bamboo is not sustainable, yet it is a practice that was commonplace in the past and some bamboo farming is still implicated in forest clearance today. Additionally, as with any crop grown as a monoculture, plantations can have detrimental effects on local wildlife and ecosystems, as can overuse of pesticides and fertilisers.
FSC-certified bamboo (many brands carry this, including the ones mentioned above) prohibits the conversion of natural forests and manages the use of chemical intervention.
The evidence points to FSC-certified bamboo being a better option in terms of environmental impact than virgin wood. That's even when taking into account its journey from China, because transport emissions generally make up a small part of overall environmental impact of toilet paper products.
But using bamboo still means growing a new resource for a single-use product. There are other alternative paper fibres out there that results as by-products of other industries that would otherwise go to waste, such as pulp made from bagasse (a residue fibre left over from sugarcane production) or wheat straw. But they are rarely found in toilet paper, currently.
When we tested bamboo toilet roll we found some surprising results. Read about our investigation into some bamboo toilet roll samples that were actually mainly made of wood.
Recycled paper
Another option is to buy paper that has already been used for something else. This is the option preferred by NGOs such as WWF, environmental advocacy group the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the campaigning organisation and publication, Ethical Consumer.
‘We should be working towards reducing our paper consumption in Europe as much as possible and using recycled paper where we can, which definitely includes toilet roll,' says Johannes Zahnen from the WWF.
According to the Environmental Paper Network’s calculator, recycled paper has approximately one third of the greenhouse gas emissions of virgin paper and around half the water use – and, of course, it doesn’t require any new wood.
In January 2024, we checked the biggest UK supermarkets and found that Sainsbury’s and Tesco both carry own-brand fully recycled paper ranges. Morrisons had recently delisted its recycled toilet paper and Asda doesn’t stock a recycled range.
Lidl and Aldi also don’t stock fully recycled ranges, while Co-op, Ocado and Waitrose do.
Within recycled paper, there’s a hierarchy. It’s better to pick paper that comes from post-consumer waste sources – paper that's already been through a consumer life cycle such as office paper or packaging. It's generally more sustainable than paper recycled from pre-consumer waste, such as offcuts and scraps from a printer press. Look for brands that give you information about where paper is sourced and what type is used.
There are a few smaller brands in the UK marketplace making toilet roll from entirely recycled paper sourced in the UK and Europe. Some, like Honest Supplies and Serious Tissues, state that they only use post-consumer recycled paper – as does Naked Sprout. Ecoleaf by Suma is 90% post-consumer and 10% mill-recycled tissue. Who Gives A Crap’s recycled paper is also post-consumer but comes from China.
Recycled toilet roll can’t be made of any old recycled paper. Newspaper and some other printed materials can contain mineral oils that can be dangerous, and some other paper materials just aren’t suitable. Mainly, office paper is used, though some brands use a proportion of cardboard. Some manufacturers who don't make recycled paper products argue that it's hard to guarantee product consistency using recycled fibres, and also point to a lack of recycled paper supply.
Other sustainability factors to consider
Toilet paper manufacturers often argue that use of raw materials isn’t the only thing that should be considered in determining the sustainability of toilet paper because other aspects of the production process are important, such as whether the factory operates on renewable energy and the type of transportation used to move the toilet paper from factory to retail.
This is true, and it's worth looking into the the brand and company behind products to see what other measures they take to be sustainable.
We've also noticed brands promoting their use of recycled plastic in their packaging. This should be seen in the context of the whole product – packaging is only a small percentage of toilet roll’s environmental impact.
Packaging that contains 30% or more recycled plastic is exempt from the Plastic Packaging Tax, so some brands are keen to comply with this for economic benefits. This isn't to say it's a bad thing, just that its importance shouldn't be overstated.
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