Toilet paper is a fact of life in American homes; the average person uses 141 rolls of the stuff a year. But the cuddly, forest-dwelling mascots adorning TP packages are masking a dangerous irony. The wood pulp used to produce the majority of tushy tissue comes from freshly cut trees, and much of the U.S. supply originates from Canadian forests, where logging contributes some 26 million metric tons of carbon emissions a year, per a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Given the product’s short and dirty lifespan, it’s hard to defend anyone wiping their butt with virgin stock of any kind—that includes bamboo, which involves water-intensive farming. If what you seek is eco-friendly toilet paper, what you want to get behind is one made from recycled products like office paper, junk mail, and newsprint. According to the NRDC report, transitioning the U.S. tissue industry from brand-new to recycled fiber could cut planet-warming emissions by 13.1 million tons annually, which is equivalent to parking 2.6 million gas-powered cars each year.
Now, if you think recycled TP would be as rough as a gas station paper towel, we’re right there with you—or at least we were. But, after testing six popular and easy-to-find recycled brands in both real-world and simulated bathroom settings, and digging into factors affecting sustainability like where companies get their paper and how they handle shipping, we were pleasantly surprised by how gentle on bums and the planet the best recycled toilet paper turned out to be.
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one5c‘s pick: Who Gives A Crap 100% Recycled Toilet Paper
It was a photo finish, but wrapped like a present and built for business, Who Gives A Crap ($38 for 24 rolls; us.whogivesacrap.org) may just make you rethink your bathroom routine. With its dense, three-ply construction and oversized rolls, it consistently earned high marks in both the bathroom and Earth-friendly sniff tests—though it didn’t dominate across the board. Most importantly, it was soft and sturdy enough to keep us from pining for the ultra-plush TP our tushies are used to, despite its smaller footprint.
Why it’s good
Over four weeks of real-world use by both adults and children, Who Gives A Crap consistently struck a balance between comfort and utility. (Who wants a wipe that feels like a cloud but falls apart in your fingers?) It didn’t break apart in our hands, and we never needed to frantically spin the roll to wad up a crap-ton of squares.
With its dense rolls (385 three-ply sheets each), it boasts the most square footage per roll in our test—more than double Marcal’s 100% Recycled 2-Ply Bath Tissue, which was the stingiest on our list—reducing the hassle of frequent roll changes. Its cheerful paper wrapping adds some visual charm to the bathroom, too.
Additionally, in our more controlled tests, Who Gives A Crap excelled thanks largely to its strength. It soaked up more water than all its competitors, except for Aria’s 100% Recycled Toilet Paper—our runner-up. It tied for first place in our wiping simulation, requiring only a two-sheet stack to pick up a smear of peanut butter. Durability-wise, it held 280 grams of weight (that’s about a baseball) before tearing, meaning you’re less likely to have a wipe turn into an unexpected finger painting.
Nothing’s perfect: Who Gives A Crap is definitely a step below the pillowy TP many people are used to, and it placed second to Aria in a blind softness ranking by four testers. And then there’s the linting—its biggest drawback. Of all the brands we tried, it left the most visible fibers and rolled bits behind on a swatch of black fabric; Seventh Generation’s 100% Recycled 2-Ply Bath Tissue, by comparison, left virtually no residue, but crapped out everywhere else. Who Gives A Crap’s oversized rolls, while generous, can also feel cramped in smaller holders. And then there’s the shipping: The brand is not widely available in retail stores, so you won’t be throwing it in your cart in a TP emergency.
Why it’s sustainable
All of the TPs we tested are made from 100% recycled material—a blend of post-consumer refuse like newspapers and pre-consumer excess like paper scraps created during manufacturing—and use a chlorine-free bleaching process. Who Gives A Crap edges just ahead of its competition thanks mostly to the company’s efforts outside of the finished product. The firm donates half of all profits to improving clean water access and sanitation in developing countries through organizations like Fresh Life and WaterAid. It also purchases carbon credits and handpicks the projects it funds to offset shipping emissions, but it isn’t just relying on that to ease its footprint: The company is working with its supply chain partners to switch to renewable energy and is in the midst of a life cycle assessment to ID other areas it might slash impact.
Who Gives A Crap also received high marks for plastic-free packaging. They do individually wrap TP, but only because doing so uses the same amount of paper by weight that would be needed to swaddle bundles together. The tissue also is free of BPAs, low levels of which are common in recycled TP, and formaldehyde, a carcinogen and allergen sometimes added to strengthen toilet paper.
Nothing’s perfect: There are a couple messy spots in Who Gives A Crap’s sustainability story. The paper has one of the lowest percentages of post-consumer material (that’s the stuff that’s potentially landfill-bound as opposed to scraps from, say, an envelope or paper plate factory) at 51%. Additionally, though there are plants in the U.S., much of the production happens in China, where the fossil fuel mix is dominated by coal. The fact that it has to get shipped is also a semi-bummer, and carbon offsets are an imperfect solution for reducing those emissions, as the funds can often overstate their impact.
The runner-up
Aria’s 100% Recycled Bath Tissue ($30 for 24 rolls; amazon.com) came out of bathroom testing with a small edge on the rest of the field, but lost the overall crown by a slim margin because of a couple skid marks in its eco scorecard. With its three-ply construction and a feel that rivals some of the plushest rolls, it’s the softness and absorbency champ, which makes sense given that its parent company, Georgia-Pacific, also makes Angel Soft and Quilted Northern. But its smaller roll size (264 sheets) makes it pricier than Who Gives A Crap on a per-sheet basis.
Sustainability-wise, it landed in second place. While the toilet paper is made from 90% post-consumer stock and is made here in the U.S., production still relies on highly emitting fuel sources like natural gas (aka methane) and burning biomass. It’s free from dyes and fragrances, but the company doesn’t say whether it contains formaldehyde or BPA, which shaves points off its end-of-life score.
What we tested
We chose six brands of toilet paper that are well reviewed, easy to find, and scored high marks in the NRDC’s report on the tissue industry: Seventh Generation 100% Recycled 2-Ply Bath Tissue; Target Everspring 100% Recycled Toilet Paper Rolls; 365 by Whole Foods 100% Recycled Bath Tissue; Marcal 100% Recycled 2-Ply Bath Tissue; Aria 100% Recycled Toilet Paper; and Who Gives A Crap 100% Recycled Toilet Paper. Cost-wise this is one area where you’re not paying a premium for going planet-friendly: These TPs range between $0.19 and $0.55 per 100 sheets, which is very similar to their virgin tree brethren (a six-pack of Charmin Mega Rolls, for instance, runs about $0.59 per 100 sheets).
How we picked our winner
Our product recommendations are based on two parallel assessment tracks: one for performance and one for sustainability. These ratings combine to land on our final winner, which represents the ideal blend of a product that’s good for the Earth and for your life. Read more about our assessment process here.
How we tested performance
Household goods don’t get more utilitarian than toilet paper. We spent four weeks using each brand in real bathrooms, noting how many sheets it took to get the job done, how comfortable it felt, how well it held up, and how effective it was at wiping away our daily business. To complement these trials, we ran a series of controlled tests to measure key attributes:
- The Wiping Test: We applied half a teaspoon of peanut butter to the crook of an elbow and cleaned it using five folded sheets of each brand, counting how many stacks of five wipes it took to remove the mess completely.
- The Absorbency Test: We weighed five dry sheets from each roll on a digital kitchen scale, submerged them in water for 10 seconds, let them drip for another 10 seconds, and re-weighed to gauge how much water the paper absorbed. We repeated this process three times per brand for accuracy.
- The Softness Test: We blindfolded four adult testers and had them rank samples from softest to roughest based solely on touch.
- The Linting Test: We sprayed two bursts of water onto sheets from 2 inches away and wiped them across black cotton fabric to see how much residue they left behind.
- The Strength Test: To test how each TP might fare during a vigorous wipe, we hung five-sheet strips of each between two chairs set 10 inches apart and added 2.5-gram weights one by one until the paper tore, recording the total weight it held.
How we scored sustainability
Our sustainability ratings take into account three factors: a product’s environmental impact at its production, what happens at its end-of-life, and the manufacturer’s environmental behavior. Production factors in where, how, and with what a product is made—as well as how it’s transported through the supply chain. Since the TP is flushed (or in a few cases tossed) our end-of-life ratings focus on any potential toxicity. The final factor accounts for actions the company takes outside the life of a product to minimize its footprint or benefit the environment—we award bonus points for transparency, as well. These scores are informed inferences based on available information, not full-blown life-cycle analyses.
Jesse Will is a writer based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Men’s Journal, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Pitchfork, Popular Science and Road & Track.
Tyler Santora is a freelance science journalist, editor, and fact-checker. He’s written for publications such as Undark, Scientific American, Popular Science, and more.
one5c does not earn a commission on any product purchased through our reviews.