Our green credentials

We often use comparisons to illustrate the environmental benefits of our processes and products. This helps us provide our customers with a more concrete picture of how Naked Sprout is more sustainable than comparison products. But these numbers are only helpful if they’re reliable, comparable, and verifiable. So here are the details of how we calculate our savings in CO2e, trees, harsh chemicals, and plastic, compared to standard ways of making toilet rolls.

Total rolls sold
Our total toilet rolls sold figure includes the confirmed sales of Naked Sprout bamboo and recycled toilet paper to date. We do not include charitable donations of toilet rolls. We assume that every Naked Sprout roll used means one less roll that has been made in the standard way (with virgin wood), and so we use these numbers to calculate our total savings. 

CO2e saved
Our figures for our total CO2e savings are based on comparison figures for our own emissions and those of other toilet rolls calculated by Carbon Footprint Ltd. Sadly most toilet roll companies don’t publish their Life Cycle Assessments, so we asked Carbon Footprint to calculate a footprint for toilet rolls that are being made in the standard way. Carbon Footprint used available data for raw materials, distribution and manufacturing to make profiles for toilet rolls made in the UK from virgin timber, rolls made in the UK from recycled materials, and bamboo rolls made in China, to calculate profiles that are as close to real as possible. When we give a single figure for “CO2e saved” we are comparing the figures for our toilet rolls with the profile for standard toilet rolls made from virgin tree pulp. The difference between the figures for CO2e emissions (0.19088kg of CO2e per roll of bamboo toilet paper and 0.18829kg of CO2e per roll of recycled toilet paper) is multiplied by the total number of rolls sold by Naked Sprout to give the total savings in CO2e. We have translated these emissions savings into the emissions that would be emitted by driving in a standard family car, using the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Trees saved
Our toilet rolls are made from FSC-certified bamboo or recycled cardboard and kraft paper, so there are no trees cut down to make them. Many standard toilet rolls still use virgin tree pulp, as discussed in this article published by The Independent on the 15th of May 2021, and this article also provides a range for the amount of trees it takes to produce a single roll (we’ve taken the median of 0.00095). We have taken this figure, multiplied it by the amount of rolls we have made, to give us a total “trees saved” figure. We’ve then translated this figure into hectares of UK woodland, using information about typical tree density given by the UK’s Woodland Trust (they give a range with a median figure of 1350 trees per hectare). We’ve converted this into tennis courts, because this makes it easier to visualise!

Chemicals saved
Because our toilet rolls are unbleached and do not use the same harsh chemicals found in many standard tissue products we are making significant savings of chemicals. The benchmark for the litres of chemicals used to make standard tissue products was calculated by Carbon Footprint Ltd as part of their profile of comparison products. The figure from this assessment was 0.0097 litres of harsh chemicals per roll. We have translated this figure for litres into bathtubs using the capacity of a standard UK bathtub provided by the bath experts at Royal Bathrooms (378.5 litres).

Plastic saved
Plastic kg saved per roll is based on a study of comparable products by LC Paper. The study produced a result of 0.444kg per 24 rolls, and 0.888kg per 48 rolls. We divide the total plastic saved per 24 roll by 24, and the total plastic saved per 48 rolls by 40, to generate a per roll figure of 0.0185kg per roll.