So as you have no doubt seen and heard , the number one fear in this global coronavirus pandemic has apparently been running out of toilet paper. We have all seen the crazy memes and ridiculous videos of people panic buying and hoarding toilet tissue and the barren supermarket shelves where rolls once stood.
Toilet paper is considered an essential item and we all use it every day ( hopefully at least once if your pooping properly) but how healthy is this habit? It certainly throws up loads of questions on sustainability. The amount of toilet paper that must be flushed out into the ocean every day makes me feel sick. But is there an alternative ?
I made the change to a sustainable toilet paper company about a year ago and at least feel better about the fact that the paper I flush is recycled; and the money I am paying is going towards social enterprises that are addressing human needs such as sanitation and environmental needs like climate change.
Here are a few of my favourite sustainable toilet tissue brands that are impacting the world ‘in more ways than just wiping bums’.
Serious Tissues
‘Serious Tissues for Serious Issues’
This month, UK-based social enterprise Change Please launched Serious Tissues: A line of recycled toilet paper for which all proceeds are donated to the NHS. Normally, Change Please works to help homeless people achieve upward mobility by becoming baristas. The organization then pivoted to launch Serious Tissues, originally founded to address sustainability and save trees, this summer. However, the COVID-fueled spike in demand for toilet paper inspired Change Please to release the line early. Serious Tissues’ profits go to covering the costs of travel and accommodation, as well as wellness packs, for NHS workers taking on long shifts. One 36-roll package retails for GBP 24.
This quote, from Change Please co-founder Chris Baker, is what made Serious Tissues stand out to us “Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen people up and down the country panic buying toilet rolls and we believe we can turn this behavior into a force for good.”
Who Gives A Crap
‘What if every crap made a difference?’
Who Gives a Crap make all their products from environmentally friendly materials which also contain no chemicals so they are better for your health too. donate 50% of their profits to help build toilets for those in need. The founders started Who Gives A Crap when they learnt that 2.3 billion people across the world don’t have access to a toilet. That’s roughly 40% of the global population and means that around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That’s almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes. They are big on toilet humour at Who Gives a Crap and have a blog called ‘Talking Crap’ which is highly amusing. A bumper pack of 48 rolls cost £40.
To crowdsource funding to launch Who Gives a Crap, Simon, one of the founders, sat on a toilet for 50 hours refusing to move until they had raise over $50,000.
But is toilet paper really the healthiest way to take care of our post poop ablutions?
Hello Tushy
Hello Tushy would say otherwise, and a recent resurgence in the popularity of bidets and bidet attachments to toilets may indicate that in the future, toilet paper may become as frowned upon as plastic water bottles in our every day lives. These guys have developed an attachment that converts your ordinary toilet into a bidet which even has temperature and pressure controls for those with particularly sensitive bottoms. Certainly there are massive sustainable, economic and personal hygiene benefits to making the switch back to bidets…. whether they will make a full time re-entrance in to your home from an interior stylistic point of view is another thing.
Whether you are ready to dump the toilet paper concept or not, you have to watch the promotional video for Tushy below as its the funniest thing I have seen in ages and offers a very compelling argument that perhaps toilet tissue demand is going down the toilet.
These guys believe that wiping with dry paper or wet wipes contributes to the 30 million annual cases of hemorrhoids, UTIs, yeast infections, anal fissures and anal itching etc. They say that ‘water is the best way to clean just about everything…So wouldn’t it make sense to clean our butts after we poop?’ …. and who can argue with them? From a health angle , it sounds like a no-brainer … or is that a no-butter!?
Besides offering great health and hygiene benefits to users, bidets also help protect the environment. It takes 437 billion gallons of water, 253,000 tons of bleach, and 15 million trees to make toilet paper annually which is a shocking bunch of statistics when you consider that we are literally just flushing it down the loo. At Tushy, they claim that ‘Americans use over 34 million rolls of toilet paper every day which wastes precious resources and damages the environment and ecosystems that rely on trees’. The TUSHY bidet reduces toilet paper consumption by 75 to 100% to give you not only a luxurious bathroom experience but also a green lifestyle. Plus from a design perspective it is super sleek and easy to install, it literally fits just underneath your toilet seat. You don’t need to call out a plumber or even get your dad involved to fit it… so you can fulfill your dreams of a spa for your butt even in lockdown. And as the bidet comes with variety of metal and coloured buttons to choose from, you can even match your decor to it.
Who else is thinking about going paper free ?
Love and Health
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