The UK’s first carbon balanced bamboo toilet paper

Okay. So, you know when we started as a business waaaay back in 2016? You know the story by now – our co-founders Chris and Julie saw a plethora of bamboo growing wildly in China and decided to make loo roll out of it. As you do.

There weren’t many companies doing what we do, meaning that we are the UK’s first carbon balanced bamboo toilet paper company. In fact, as soon as we became a company, we began the process of offsetting our carbon – officially becoming carbon balanced in 2017.

Our toilet paper may be made in China (it needs to be, because that’s where the bamboo grows), but we’re a UK-based company (London, specifically). So, how are we carbon balanced?

Carbon Balanced?

Basically, every step of the process to make our bamboo products produces unavoidable carbon, and until we find a super special way to make it so that it doesn’t, it always will. So, what we do is calculate how much carbon we produce – from manufacturing to shipping – and ‘offset’ that.

Offsetting essentially means putting back what you expel – in our case, we donate the equivalent amount of carbon to the World Land Trust, who then use that money to protect the rainforest and plant more trees.

Looking after environmentally threatened land and forests equals more carbon remaining where it needs to stay (in the ground) and more trees to absorb it (and expel oxygen). See? Balanced. 

Why not carbon neutral?

Well, it depends on which type of project you fund as a company. Carbon neutral projects involve purchasing verified carbon units (VCUs) to provide third-party verification for the carbon neutral claim. Whereas carbon balance projects allow for a greater proportion of the funding to go directly to the project.

It can be a little confusing when companies start discussing carbon balancing, neutrality, and positivity, partly because it can be quite a difficult thing to explain, partly because some companies (no names) might mildly stretch their claims to fit the truth.

We want YOU to know, whether you’re a customer, fan or you’ve just stumbled across this lovely blog, that we’re quite honest and up front with our sustainability claims, and we’ll have proof to back it up. For example, here you can find our World Land Trust page explaining our carbon balancing project.

And now you can access our 2021 Sustainability Report, containing loads of fun, eco info like our certifications, fundraising and general helping of the planet. Here’s the link!: https://cheekypanda.com/pages/sustainability-report-2021

So, if anyone else tells you they’re the UK’s first carbon balanced tissue brand, you give ‘em two words: 

Cheeky.
Panda.

Love,
Team Cheeky Panda x