I did not expect to become someone with strong opinions about toilet paper, and yet, here we are. I blame adulthood, motherhood, and the slow realization that a lot of the products we use every single day are things we have never really questioned. Toilet paper is one of those things. We buy it, use it, complain when someone does not replace the roll, and move on with our lives. Most of us know if we like it soft, strong, cheap, or in bulk from Costco, but beyond that, we do not really think about it.
Then one day I started thinking about it, and unfortunately for everyone in my house, I could not stop. This is something we use constantly, on one of the most sensitive areas of our body, and somehow the entire conversation around it has been reduced to whether it feels fluffy and whether a cartoon bear is proud of how little lint it leaves behind. Which is insane when you really sit with it. Why is lint part of the experience at all? Why did we all just collectively accept that tiny paper dust in our underwear was normal?
So I started asking the kinds of questions that make your family slowly back out of the room. Why is toilet paper so white? Why is it so soft? What makes it plush? What does it mean when it says recycled? What is it bleached with? Where does the pulp come from? Why does some of it fall apart instantly while other kinds seem like they could survive a hurricane? And why is it weirdly hard to find straight answers about something we use every day?
That is what sent me down the toilet paper rabbit hole. I tried the big fluffy brands, the eco brands, the recycled brands, the bamboo brands, the expensive influencer brands, the ones that felt like printer paper, and the ones that left behind enough lint to make me question my life choices. After all of that, the one I kept coming back to was PlantPaper.
To be clear, my family did not immediately celebrate this decision. According to my husband and children, toilet paper should feel like angel feathers handcrafted in a luxury spa. PlantPaper is not that. It is not the thick, fluffy, cloud like toilet paper most of us have been trained to think is the gold standard. It feels different because it is different, and that took a little adjusting.
But the more I learned, the more I liked it. PlantPaper is made from 100% FSC certified unbleached bamboo. It does not use bleach, dyes, fragrance, or formaldehyde. The company also tests for hundreds of PFAS compounds and reports that they are not detected. I appreciated that they were actually willing to talk about how the product is made, because most toilet paper brands do not make that information easy to find.
That matters to me. Not because I think everyone needs to panic over toilet paper, but because I think we should be allowed to know what we are buying. We should know why something is bright white. We should know what chemicals are used. We should know where materials come from. We should know what words like soft, strong, recycled, and natural actually mean when they are printed on a package.
I also learned that recycled toilet paper, while often better for the environment than virgin tree pulp, can sometimes contain traces of BPA or BPS from things like receipts and mixed paper streams. Again, this is not me telling everyone to spiral. It is me saying that once you learn certain things, you start looking at everyday products differently. Sometimes the better choice is not the one with the prettiest packaging or the one that feels the softest. Sometimes it is the one with fewer questions hiding behind the label.
Part of what made PlantPaper stand out to me is that it was not started as another cute bathroom brand trying to sell prettier packaging. It was started by people who were genuinely looking at toilet paper and saying, why are we still doing it this way?
PlantPaper was founded by Scott, Josh, Lee, and Deeva, with Deeva Green sharing a lot of the story behind the company. Deeva grew up in Ontario, spending summers near the boreal forest, so the environmental impact of cutting down old growth forests was not just some abstract issue to her. She studied environmental policy, later earned a master’s in Sustainability Management, and worked in sustainability consulting and sustainable sourcing before helping launch PlantPaper in 2016.
What I appreciate about that is that this was not just a branding exercise. They spent years developing the product because they did not want people to feel like they were making some miserable eco sacrifice every time they went to the bathroom. Their goal was to make toilet paper that felt like a better standard, not a punishment. They worked through the details most of us never think about, like paper density, embossing, ply distance, sheet size, texture, packaging, and how the product actually performs.
They also made the choice to keep the paper unbleached, which is why it has that off white, brown paper look that my children have so many feelings about. But that choice is also part of the point. No unnecessary whitening. No pretending toilet paper has to look bright white to be clean. No acting like softness is the only thing that matters.
And honestly, I like that. I like that PlantPaper started with people asking better questions about a very normal product that most of us use without thinking. I like that they are talking about trees, water, chemicals, packaging, and design in a category that has mostly been dominated by big companies, cartoon bears, and the promise of fluff. It makes the swap feel less random and more intentional.
We are also looking at installing a bidet, because honestly, it makes sense. Most of the world uses them, and somehow here we are acting like dry paper is the peak of bathroom innovation. A bidet would help us use less toilet paper, which is the other part of this that matters to me. I do not want every better choice to turn into buying more things. I want to get better at consuming less. Underconsumption is something I keep coming back to, because the answer cannot always be another product, another subscription, another cabinet full of swaps. Sometimes the better choice is using less of something in the first place.
The funny part is that now bright white toilet paper bothers me. My brain sees it and immediately wonders what had to happen to make it look like that. That may not be normal, but apparently this is who I am now. I have become a woman who thinks too much about toilet paper, and honestly, I am okay with it.
PlantPaper is not perfect. If you are looking for ultra plush, spa bathroom, luxury hotel toilet paper, this is probably going to feel like an adjustment. But if you care about what products are made from, how they are processed, what they leave behind, and whether a company is being transparent, it is worth trying.
And yes, we are still a family divided. Some people in my house would happily go back to the fluffy stuff tomorrow. But this is one of those swaps I keep coming back to because it makes sense to me. It is simple, it is cleaner, it creates less lint, and it made me realize how little I knew about a product I have used my entire life without a second thought.
So no, I did not plan to become passionate about toilet paper. But here we are. And if getting older means asking better questions about the things we bring into our homes, while also learning to consume less wherever we can, I am good with that.
~Christy
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