The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss *deep breath* ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Every day, over 1 million trees are cut down to make traditional toilet paper. And this is assuming that just over half the world’s wipers use traditional toilet paper (all signs point to the numbers being a lot higher, but hey, we’re being conservative).
How did we get to this number? Well, like us, you may have heard a few deforestation statistics like this floating around about. We wanted to get to the bottom (hehe) of it ourselves, so we commissioned a report from an environmental 3rd party about the impact of traditional TP on the environment.
The results were even more shocking than we’d anticipated. Here are some of the most unbelievable parts:
- Globally, we use approximately 42 million tonnes of toilet paper a year. That’s 127 rolls of toilet paper per person
- Every day we would need to clear over 2 million square metres of forest to produce enough virgin toilet paper for the world’s needs. That’s about the same amount of land as 45 Sydney Opera Houses. Or 50 London Wembley Stadiums. The entirety of Central Park every single day!
- All that deforestation would mean that over 180,000,000,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide would remain in the atmosphere every year.
Killing trees, destroying forests, ruining ecosystems just to wipe your bum? It doesn’t make sense to us. That’s why we’re so passionate about using sustainable materials like recycled paper or bamboo to make our TP.
We know this is a lot of maths, but the real takeaway is that using eco-friendly TP whether it be our or someone else's (obviously we hope it’s ours), makes a huge difference. And if you are into all of the science-y graphs and giant numbers, you can dig into the full report here.