Can you flush kitchen roll down the toilet?
You’d be surprised how often the question comes up. Kitchen paper towels come in handy for all sorts of everyday tasks, from wiping surfaces to cleaning mirrors. But can they be used in the same way as their shorter cousins, the toilet roll?
Maybe you’re caught short. Maybe you keep forgetting to add toilet paper to the shopping list. Maybe you used all of your rolls for toilet paper crafts after our blog post the other week. Or maybe you're just curious.
Either way, let’s settle this once and for all.
Can kitchen roll be used as toilet paper?
On the face of it, kitchen roll shares many qualities with toilet paper; it’s soft, it’s absorbent. It comes in perforated sheets wrapped around a cardboard tube.
So you might assume that the two products are interchangeable. You wouldn't be alone. Google records a consistently high number of searches for the question "Can kitchen roll be used as toilet paper?" and our own customers even get in touch from time to time to check.
A Reddit post from 2019 relates the saga of one user who spent eight entire days (!) using kitchen roll instead of toilet paper, because they kept forgetting to go to the shop. Their chronicle was, predictably, tinged with regret, mainly because of the indignity of the sight of the roll awkwardly perched on the holder in their (otherwise lovely) bathroom.
They should have bought a toilet paper subscription; because while kitchen roll looks like toilet paper, feels like toilet paper, and unrolls like toilet paper, it has one huge, important difference from toilet paper.
You absolutely should not flush it. The Reddit thread for the kitchen roll substitution saga was full of plumbers yelling at the original poster to put their sheets in the bin after using them, instead of flushing them.
We have to agree. Kitchen roll might feel superficially like toilet paper in the hand, but it's a very different matter once it gets into your loo...
Will kitchen roll dissolve in the toilet?
No, it won’t.
Toilet paper is specifically designed to break down quickly in water. It’s tested to make sure it does just that. The process of making toilet paper involves a delicate balance between softness and strength, something we’ve written about before on our blog. Basically, it’s important to make sure that toilet paper stays together when it’s dry in your hand, but breaks down quickly when it gets wet.
Kitchen rolls will generally be made in the same factory, using the same kind of raw ingredients and processes as toilet paper. At Naked Sprout our kitchen rolls are unbleached, like our toilet paper, and manufactured without fossil fuels, like our toilet paper.
But when kitchen roll is being made it’s treated with a wet-strength ingredient, usually derived from resin, to make sure it doesn’t dissolve when it gets wet. This ingredient strengthens the bonds between the fibres, so you keep the softness of the tissue, without the quick disintegration that you want for toilet paper.
Try using a normal toilet tissue to clean your chopping board and you’ll see the difference. Wet sheets of toilet paper will start to shrink down and crumble as soon as they gets wet, especially when you apply pressure. Kitchen roll, on the other hand, is designed not to do this - in order to be a practical item to use in mopping up spills, it needs to be able to withstand a bit of a soak and a scrub. And that’s exactly why it’s a nightmare for your toilet.
Can you flush a kitchen roll in the UK?
Once more for the people in the back: No! But why is the country significant?
Most UK toilets use a simple gravity flush system. Water is held in a tank at the top of the toilet, and when you flush gravity clears the water and waste from the bowl into your drains. That movement of the water and pressure of gravity is enough to kick-start the dissolving process for toilet paper - the rest will happen in the sewer network.
But with its special wet-strength resin, kitchen roll is more than tough enough to withstand the flush. That, combined with the fact that kitchen roll sheets are larger than toilet paper, means you’re setting yourself up for some serious plumbing problems. Many of us in the UK live in older buildings with narrow pipes, or off grid with a septic tank. Trust us, you don't want to deal with the problems you'll cause by putting a product specifically designed not to break down in water, down your pipes.
However, if you happen to be in a country where people bin their toilet paper instead of flushing it, then technically, you could use kitchen paper towels as toilet paper and then pop the used sheets in the bin. It’s probably not the most practical solution - sheets of kitchen roll are going to be much larger than required for the task at hand - and it’s not exactly the most cost-effective alternative to toilet paper. But we’re not here to judge.
Just don't flush it! Really!
Final thoughts
Hopefully we've got the point across. Kitchen roll might look similar to toilet paper, but it's been specially designed so that it doesn't do the one thing that toilet paper has to do, break down in water. If you flush kitchen paper towels, you’re inviting blockages, plumbing bills, and possibly some very angry neighbours.
If you want to avoid ever running out of toilet paper, a toilet paper subscription could be the way to go. No more desperate rummaging through the cupboard for a tissues box, no more risky experiments with paper kitchen towels. Just a steady supply of good toilet paper, delivered straight to your door.
Want to try out some sustainable, unbleached kitchen roll (for the kitchen) and toilet paper (for the toilet)?