You may have heard us banging on about deforestation, and the fact our toilet paper doesn’t come from trees like regular TP. It’s something we’ve been passionate about right from the beginning, when our founder was busy sitting on a loo to raise money for our first production run. 

But now we’ve gone a step further! We’ve made an official No Deforestation Commitment. You can download it in full to read here, but we’ll sum up some of the most important stuff for you first.

What is a No Deforestation Commitment?

It’s a totally voluntary promise companies can make that explains how they’ll prevent deforestation associated with the items they produce, trade and/or sell. 

Our commitment is pretty simple:

Why do you need to make that ‘official’?

We know, we know, not everything needs a label. And at Who Gives A Crap, we’re already committed to protecting the world’s forests across our entire range of products, packaging and operations. (Exhibit A: we’ve been working hard on our FSC® certification (C190271) and will be able to add the FSC label to all our paper products in early 2025! We’re pretty thrilled about that.)

But we’ve made this commitment because we know that:

• Natural forests store more carbon than plantations and they continue to store carbon for centuries, making them a central part of addressing climate change

• Protection of natural forests is not only important for preserving the world’s ecosystems, it’s also a key factor in protecting the world’s water resources (forests supply around three quarters of the world’s accessible freshwater) 

• Trees are not needed to make TP!
  

A No Deforestation Commitment formalises our dedication to protecting forests and provides guidance for our internal teams, far into the future. It can also provide insight to customers and other businesses on the steps we’ve taken to ensure our business isn’t connected to deforestation. And we want to expand our good influence to help protect forests!

Ok, makes sense! Sounds like you’ve got this sorted.

Well, we’re doing our best, but there are still a few challenges ahead of us to meet the requirements of a robust No Deforestation Commitment. And that’s ok - that’s the point of a commitment like this!

There are no virgin tree fibres in our toilet paper, tissue and paper towel sold in the UK, EU and Australia - including packaging. But there are palm oil-based ingredients in our sister brand Good Time’s products. We’re working to eliminate the virgin tree-based fibre in the boxes of US manufactured products, and phase out palm oil sourced from regions linked to deforestation (primarily SE Asia).

Teams from across the business - from supply chain to brand to product innovation - are focused on this already, and there are initiatives in the works and options being explored to keep us on track with our commitment. 

Anything else we should know? 

We’ve probably said enough for now, but a reminder that you can read more about our No Deforestation Commitment here.