The hidden single-use plastic in public loos (and how we ditched it)

For our blog post today we thought we’d take a break from discussing the toilet paper you use at home, and consider the toilet paper you find in public loos.

Next time you visit the loo in a service station, airport, or hospital, take a look around and notice how much single-use plastic you can spot. 

Hopefully not too much! Maybe just bin liners, packaging on sanitary items, and the odd plastic air freshener. If you’re really looking you might notice plastic cartridges or bags of soap in the dispensers next to the sinks. 

But at least, you’d think, the toilet paper comes without any single-use plastic. Right?

Maybe not. 

Hidden behind the smart dispensers in the cubicles of public toilets lies a world of plastics that are used just one time and thrown away. 

We’ve launched our lovely unbleached commercial jumbo toilet rolls this year, and like our regular toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, and tissues, they’re completely plastic-free. So we thought we’d take the opportunity to lift the lid on the problem we’re solving. 

How businesses bulk buy toilet roll

Right, back to the cubicle.

If you happen to be someone who buys toilet paper for a business, you will already know this. If not, here’s a quick lesson on toilet paper dispensers and the rolls that go with them.

Many businesses save money on toilet paper by bulk buying it in the form of “jumbo” rolls. As the name suggests, these are extra large rolls that need changing less frequently, helpful in workplaces and public venues where toilets are much busier than your standard home loo. 

And jumbo rolls have another benefit for business customers; they work with toilet paper dispensers. These can be mounted on the walls of toilet cubicles, saving space and keeping everything easy to clean. They are generally lockable, to stop people helping themselves to the whole roll, and often dispense sheets one at a time, to prevent over-use. 

So we’ve got extra long rolls, and we’ve got dispensers to house them. So where does the single-use plastic come in? 

We have to look under the hood, at how the two things fit together.

How toilet paper dispensers work

In the cardboard centre of many jumbo rolls, or even standard sized toilet rolls housed in a commercial dispenser, you’ll find a plastic adapter or plug. Different brands use different shaped adapters that only fit their own dispensers.

This means that once a business has gone to the effort of buying and installing the dispenser made by a particular brand, they’re locked in. Any refills need to be from the same company, or they won’t fit. 

It’s the printer ink cartridge trick, reimagined for toilet paper.

It’s clever from a business perspective, but those adapters are usually single-use plastic, and all of them end up as waste.

Why it matters

Small loo roll inserts might not seem like the most pressing problem. But the unnoticed plastic in our daily lives is adding up, and the impact on the health of our bodies, our seas, and our wider environment is becoming impossible to ignore. 

Jumbo rolls are the size they are precisely because businesses get through lots of them. When they’re fitted with adapters this means lots of unnecessary bits of plastic in the cubicles of offices, restaurants, schools, and museums, destined to be thrown away with every roll. 

It’s also a blind spot for sustainability reporting. Many organisations in the UK are working to cut plastic out of their supply chains. But these plastic plugs generally won’t show up in the data. Because they’re hidden inside the dispenser system, they’re easy to overlook. 

They’re so easy to overlook, in fact, that it’s difficult to get clear numbers on how many of them are out there. But we know that the UK gets through around 1.3 million tonnes of toilet tissue every year, and that around 10 - 15% of this toilet paper use will be in loos located in businesses and workplaces.  

If just 20% of the toilet paper used away from home contains those plastic inserts, that’s millions of bits of unnecessary plastic being thrown away every year. 

Eco-friendly toilet paper for businesses and wholesale

At Naked Paper, we make sustainable toilet paper without the small print. 

Our jumbo toilet rolls and dispensers are designed to be as straightforward and sustainable as possible. 

The tissue itself is made from recycled cardboard and kraft paper, with no bleach or harsh chemicals added. And there are no plastic inserts, plugs or clips hiding inside, just an inner core made from recycled, recyclable cardboard.

Each one is 170 meters, with 550 extra long 300mm sheets, plenty for busy loos. 

Also launched this year, we have our jumbo roll dispensers. These are made from pre- and post-consumer recycled plastic, so instead of hiding single-use plastic, our dispensers actually give waste plastic a second life. 

They’re built to last, and they’re a lovely soft beige colour to match our bleach-free toilet paper. They also don’t have any clever bells and whistles or minimum purchasing contracts to stop you trying a different refill roll if you want to. 

(But we don’t think you’ll want to!)

Changing the system, not just the roll

As far as we’re concerned, sustainability is a matter of fair trading. We apply the same principles of honesty and transparency when we’re designing and pricing our products as we do when we’re reporting on our green credentials. 

550So we make sure Naked Paper is the same whether you’re buying for your home or your business. Soft, bleach-free, and delivered the next working day without a side-serving of single use plastic. 

If you’re buying toilet paper for a business, check out our wholesale site. Our range is designed with sustainability and simplicity in mind, and our support team is on-hand to answer any questions.  

Want to try a great-value business range that’s honest to the core?