Plastic free toilet paper and other sustainable alternatives! This post contains affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission if you purchase products through one of my links. This money helps keep the site running. I am only an affiliate for brands and products I believe in. Sometimes I receive free products to review. For a long time, finding a plastic free toilet paper option has been a struggle. I’m not sure why, but it’s a popular practice to wrap toilet paper in plastic. I’ve seen it wrapped in paper in commercial places, but had a hard time coming by it wrapped in paper at my usual shopping haunts. Fortunately, after a lot of poking around, I’ve found several options. Just in time for Plastic Free July, too! In addition to being plastic free, it’s important to consider the environmental impact of toilet paper production. For information on how destructive the toilet paper industry is, I recommend reading the NRDC Report “The Issue with Tissue – How Americans are Flushing Forests Down the Toilet” and checking out their Shopper’s Guide. Not all toilet papers are created equal, and many of the major name brands use virgin wood, which is an incredibly destructive practice. Being tree free as well as plastic free is an essential element of a sustainable bathroom and household. Who Gives a Crap? (affiliate) Who Gives a Crap? markets itself as an environmentally and socially conscious company dedicated to making the world a less crappy place. They “donate 50% of our profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world.” They offer two types of toilet paper, one made from recycled paper, and one made from bamboo. Pricing* Recycled Paper Toilet Paper: (affiliate) 24 roll box for $30 = $1.25/roll 48 roll box for $48 = $1/roll Premium Bamboo Toilet Paper: (affiliate) 48 roll box for $52 = $1.09/roll Plus for both styles, get a $10 discount if you set up a delivery subscription (delivery schedule of 8, 12, or 16 weeks), with the option to cancel at any time, reducing the prices to ~$0.83, $0.79, and $0.88 /roll respectively. (Unless my math is wrong, which is moderately likely). They offer free shipping on orders over $25. My Experience I ordered a box of 48 rolls of the recycled paper rolls. I would have preferred to order a smaller batch, but at the time, the 48-roll set was all they had available. As of this writing (June 2019), the smaller set seems to be available again. Let me tell ya, 48 rolls is a LOT of toilet paper. My husband and I live in a two bedroom, two bathroom condo, and finding the storage for that much product at once is a bit of a challenge. We’re slowly churning through it, but for just the two of us it might be about a year’s supply. This is not a super soft, “charmin style” toilet paper, but it’s not as rough as other recycled paper brands I’ve tried – I believe it was 7th Generation that was so uncomfortable. It’s definitely way better than single ply toilet paper. It holds together pretty well, and I don’t feel lke we’re burning through rolls at a particularly fast pace. If we ever make it through the 48 rolls of this brand and the box I ordered from Reel, I might try the WGaC bamboo variety. Reel Reel is another business pitching itself as socially and environmentally responsible. Their schtick is, “For every roll you buy, we donate a single-use biodegradable toilet to someone in need.” I tried to do a little more poking around to learn what exactly a “single-use biodegradable toilet” IS, and all I found was in their FAQ page: “Our biodegradable toilets are bags that can be used to go to the bathroom and then put into the ground where they decompose and can be used as fertilizer.” To be honest, I’m not sure I’m really buying into the mission here. Fancy bags to poop in might be a good short term solution in emergency situations, but it hardly seems to tackle to long term issues surrounding the lack of safe, accessible toilets worldwide. That said, I’m more in it for being plastic free than I am for their mission, so I’m not too fussed about it. Pricing* Bamboo Toilet Paper: 24 rolls for $30 = $1.25/roll The price includes free shipping, but it does require a subscription, with the option of 4, 8, or 12 weeks between deliveries. They say you can cancel any time. My Experience I will update this section once the TP arrives and I give it a try! I should also disclose that when I purchased my first box to test it out, I had a coupon code for $20 off! $0.42/roll was too good a deal to resist, especially since it is for research purposes. November 2019 Update: I guess I should have updated this a little earlier, because my box did arrive and I’ve tried it out. It’s very nice paper, gently but strong, doesn’t break apart. The rolls are a bit smaller than the WGaC rolls, but I haven’t done a good control trial to see if they last longer. My only complaint was that when you sign up, you have to sign up for a subscription. The second box of my subscription came and I either missed or didn’t get a reminder email before it shipped so that I could delay it. I have so much TP at my house already, I really didn’t need any more. So, I gave most of the box to parents to try out. They also really liked it! Tushy I came across this company when I was looking at bidet attachment options (see more on bidets below) and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they sell bamboo toilet paper as well. Like the other two companies, they also seem to be hip and socially conscious: “Each TUSHY bidet purchase helps provide clean community toilets built by Samagra in India.” Pricing* Bamboo Toilet Paper: Tushy offers a wide range of one time purchase and subscription options, with prices varying accordingly. Fortunately, they have a really great chart on their website that breaks it all down. The priciest option is a one time purchase of a box of 8 rolls for $24, which equates to $3/roll. The least expensive option is a prepaid, year-long subscription of a box of 36 rolls for $39 per box, which equates to $1.09/roll, with delivery options of 1, 2, or 3 month intervals. Prices vary for options in between. They offer free shipping for orders over $50. My Experience At this point, I think I’ve ordered all the toilet paper my limited storage can handle, so it’s going to be some time before I can try any other brands. I wish I’d come across Tushy before ordering Reel, though. Their website has made me snort out loud several times, which I guess is a great marketing tactic, because now I feel emotionally connected to the brand and look forward to trying them out in the future. CleanItSupply.com I haven’t ordered anything from this website, either. It seems to be geared more towards commercial purchasers, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well for in-home use. They sell several varieties of paper-wrapped (rather than poly-wrapped) toilet paper, and most are sold in large, bulk quantities, which leads me to assume there would be no additional plastic lurking anywhere. I didn’t do a comprehensive search, but I did find three varieties claiming to use 100% recycled content! November 2019 Update: see notes below regarding lurking plastic. There’s some pretty reasonable prices here, so if you have the space for a large carton, or have some friends willing to go splitzies with you, this might be the way to go! Pricing* CLEANIT 2 ply: 96 roll carton for $33.09 (+ ~$8 shipping) = $0.43/roll November 2019 Update: I’m taking this variety off the list because a reader shared with me that she bought this variety and all 96 rolls came individually wrapped in plastic! So disappointing! I haven’t had any feedback on the other two, so for now they will remain on the list. Scott EcoLogo 2 ply: 80 roll carton for $75.08 (+ ~$10 shipping) = $1.06/roll 20 roll carton for $24.32 (+ ~$7 shipping) = $1.57/roll Envision 2 ply: 80 roll carton for $55.19 (+ ~$9 shipping) = $0.80/roll ToiletRolls.com [Added 2/21/21] For the UK readers, check out the eco-friendly toilet paper at ToiletRolls.com. They boast that, “Our toilet rolls are made using 100% recycled tissue. Therefore, there is no plastic in or outside our fully recycled product. As a matter of fact, our Kraft Paper tape that we seal the box with is an eco-friendly alternative.” Make sure to buy the variety that is made from 100% recycled paper, NOT the variety made from virgin wood pulp, which is environmentally destructive. They offer both 2 ply and 3 ply in a range of roll and pack sizes. Toilet Paper Alternatives Cloth Wipes Cloth wipes are the reusable equivalent of toilet paper, and for some reason it’s also commonly known as family cloth. I think family cloth is a terribly misleading name that makes it sound like the whole family is using the same piece of cloth over and over again without a cleaning in between, so I avoid calling it that. It’s a pretty simple idea – use a soft fabric square, commonly flannel, instead of toilet paper to wipe your bum. Once done, put it in a hamper, and once you have a sizable collection, wash a load. Advocates say it’s no different or worse than using cloth diapers. And since poop only smells when it’s wet (more on this in the composting toilets section), the smell is minimal since the wipes dry out in the hamper. If you want to learn more about family cloth, I recommend these two articles: Going Zero Waste: Zero Waste Toilet Paper The Pistachio Project: Why You Should Switch to Family Cloth and How to Start Detractors make a couple of arguments against using cloth wipes, mostly that it’s just too much of a leap/it’s gross, but they also argue that the water and energy needed to clean the cloth wipes is more than the water and energy needed for other options, like recycled TP and/or a bidet (see more below). Now, I can totally get behind crunching some numbers and figuring out what really has the least environmental impact. We want to actually be doing better by the environment, not just feeling like we’re doing better, right? And that means facts and figures. Unfortunately, as you’ll see below, a lot of the information floating around on the internet is unverifiable. Fortunately, after a lot of digging and looking around, I was able to find some numbers that I think are much more reliable. So, how much water does it really take to make a roll of toilet paper? The oft stated but never cited internet “fact” is that it takes 37 gallons of water to make one roll of toilet paper. Unfortunately, I cannot find any evidence of the accuracy of this number! It seems to go back to a 2009 article on treehugger.com, Stop Using Toilet Paper; Get The Blue Bidet, and as been cited several times since, including in an article from Scientific American, Wipe or Wash? Do Bidets Save Forest and Water Resources?. However, in the Tree Hugger article, the author gives no source whatsoever for this information, so I have a hard time accepting its accuracy. {{Tangent: This unsubstantiated 37 gallon figure also appears in the Worldwatch Institute story “Flushing Forests,” published in the May/June 2010 issue of World Watch Magazine. This article is in turn cited by many other articles and stories on the web, even the New York Times. The author Noelle Robbins writes, “Bill Worrell, manager of the … Continue reading Plastic Free Toilet Paper