Say hello to our new naturally coloured toilet tissue!

You asked, we listened.

Say hello to our brand spanking new naturally coloured toilet rolls. You nearly fell off your chair with excitement, right?

Now I don’t know many things more exciting than brown(ish) toilet paper and if you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you don’t either. But the real reason we are here today, is to explain to you lovely people what the difference is between our new 'unbleached', naturally coloured toilet paper and our classic white loo roll, because we know some of you have been asking.

Let’s start at the beginning, all of our toilet roll begins its life as a humble bamboo shoot. Once it’s big and strong it’s harvested from our FSC-certified forests and chopped into small pieces before being left to naturally ferment for a few days.

You’re still following right? Okay good

During the fermentation process the bamboo darkens in colour, sometimes even turning black (nobody, and I mean nobody, wants black loo roll). Now, to make our wonderful white loo roll we use a technique called Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) which uses Chlorine Dioxide to give toilet roll its whiteness and remove dirt and bacterial for hygiene reasons so that your toilet roll will be clean for use. If you aren’t familiar with this process, it might sound a bit scary, but we promise its 100% safe to use and is way more environmentally friendly than other whitening methods that other loo roll manufacturers choose to use.

Now, I hope you’re paying attention because this is where things differ. The now black fermented bamboo is placed in the Chlorine Dioxide to remove the dark colour and turn it white, it’s like magic – the longer you leave the chips, the whiter they get. So, our naturally coloured rolls just spend less time in the chlorine dioxide than the white rolls. It’s just the way it's done, any ‘unbleached’ toilet roll on the market will have also gone through this process to make sure it’s totally germ free. We just prefer to use the term ‘naturally coloured’ to avoid confusion.

Once this step is complete, the bamboo chips are added to water to make a pulp. The white or natural coloured pulp is converted into big paper reels where it is cut to size to fit perfectly in your bathroom (okay so it is a little more complicated than that, but if you wanted the specifics, we actually did a blog on this a few months back, you can check it out here!)

So, you’ve got to the end of this blog and you’re probably thinking naturally coloured toilet roll sounds great, but why is it a little more expensive than the standard white? Well, our white toilet roll is tried and tested, and we know that people love it, because of this we can be all confident and order a ton of the stuff (literally), but this shiny new product is a bit like marmite isn’t it. We don’t all want brown loo roll and that’s okay, but because of this we make less of it and because we make less of it, we pay a bit more for it. Make sense? This is lesson 101 in wholesale pricing (but that’s a blog for another time). Plus, it’s website exclusive meaning you can’t get your paws on it anywhere else, but we will work on bringing the price down, we promise.

I guess it leaves us with one last question. Are you team white or naturally coloured paper?  Rest assured; they both still have the same great Cheeky Panda quality.

Thanks for reading and if you have any other questions, please leave them in the comments box below!