Toilet paper is one of those things you buy without thinking. You grab whatever is on the shelf, you carry it to the car, you forget about it. Nobody has ever come home excited about a four pack.
Which is exactly why it took a while for anyone to look properly at how the stuff gets made. It turns out there is a lot going on behind a product nobody pays attention to.
Who Gives A Crap is an Australian company that has built a rather large business out of that observation. If you have seen the colourful paper wrapped rolls in a friend’s bathroom and wondered what the fuss was, here is the honest rundown.
The bit most people have never thought about
Most standard toilet paper is made from virgin timber. Trees get cut down, pulped, bleached and turned into something you use once and flush. The company points out that over one million trees are felled every day to make traditional toilet paper, which is a genuinely odd sentence to read about a bathroom product.
The alternative is not complicated. You can make perfectly good paper from recycled fibre, or from bamboo, which grows back fast enough to be harvested without clearing forest.
That is the whole idea. No new trees, same job done.
Recycled or bamboo?
Both options exist, and people tend to have a preference once they have tried each.
The recycled range is made from post consumer waste paper, so nothing new is grown or felled for it at all. It is the option that appeals most to people focused on waste and circularity.
The bamboo range is made from a plant that regrows quickly and needs relatively little to thrive. It tends to feel slightly softer, which matters to some households more than others.
Neither contains dyes, inks or added scents. If you have sensitive skin or small kids at home, that is worth knowing, because a lot of supermarket rolls do carry perfume.
The maths on the big box
The first reaction to a 48 roll box is usually the same. That seems like a lot of toilet paper for one delivery, and the number on the box seems like a lot of money at once.
Then you look at the sheet count. The recycled rolls carry 400 sheets each, which the company says is around twice what an average supermarket roll holds. Compare price per 100 sheets rather than price per roll and the picture changes considerably. Based on their own post purchase surveys, a single 48 roll box lasts the average person roughly a year.
So the sticker on the box is not really the number that matters. The number that matters is how long you go without thinking about toilet paper again, and that turns out to be a surprisingly long time.
There is a smaller benefit too, which is that you stop making emergency trips to the shops at 9pm because someone used the last roll and said nothing.
Where do you put it all?
This is the practical question nobody mentions in the marketing, so let us deal with it.
A 48 roll box is bulky but light. Most people find a spot for it in a linen cupboard, under a bed, on top of a wardrobe or in the laundry, and then keep a handful of rolls in the bathroom itself. The box is sturdy enough to sit in a garage or shed as long as it stays dry.
If you live in a small apartment, the smaller box sizes make more sense than trying to force a year’s supply into a one bedroom flat. Buying in bulk is only a good idea if you have somewhere sensible to put the bulk.
Where the money goes
Here is the part that makes the brand unusual rather than just eco friendly.
The business donates 50 per cent of its profits to clean water and sanitation non profits, and has done so since it launched in 2012. Total contributions have now passed 20 million Australian dollars, going to organisations including WaterAid, Fresh Life and Lwala Community Alliance, which build toilets and improve sanitation in communities that do not have them.
The company has been a certified B Corporation since 2016, which means the social and environmental claims are independently assessed rather than self declared. That distinction matters in a category where a green leaf printed on packaging often means nothing at all.
The origin story is worth a mention because it is so daft. To fund the first production run, co founder Simon Griffiths sat on a toilet in a cold warehouse and live streamed himself refusing to move until 50,000 dollars in pre orders came in. It took 50 hours. First deliveries went out in March 2013.
It is not only toilet paper any more
The range has grown well past the original product. There are tissues, paper towels, cleaning products and bin liners made with recycled plastic, all built on the same idea of taking a boring household staple and making a better version of it.
For anyone trying to cut household plastic, the packaging is a real factor. Rolls come wrapped in paper rather than the plastic film most brands use, so an entire category of soft plastic disappears from your bin.
If you want to browse what is available beyond the rolls, the full Who Gives A Crap lineup covers most of the paper and cleaning products a house gets through in a year.
So is it worth switching?
Being straight about it: no single household changes the world by changing brands of loo roll. That is not how any of this works.
What it does do is take a purchase you were going to make anyway, several times a year, forever, and point the money somewhere useful. You were never going to stop buying toilet paper. The only question is which version ends up in the cupboard.
That is a low effort decision with a long tail, which is a fairly rare combination. Most sustainable swaps ask you to change a habit. This one asks you to change a shelf.
The short version
Made from recycled paper or bamboo instead of new trees. Wrapped in paper, not plastic. Longer rolls, so the price per sheet holds up better than the price per box suggests. Half the profits go to building toilets for people who do not have one. Independently certified, so the claims stand up.
Order once, put the box somewhere sensible, and forget about it for a good while. Then order again.
