What is bleached toilet paper?

The word "bleached" has been around for a long time. The earliest recorded use of the term is from 1610, and it meant the same thing then as it means now; something that has been whitened from its natural colour, 

At Naked Paper we've decided to swim against the tide by making bleach free toilet paper which is naturally brown, so you might guess we have a few opinions on the topic of bleaching.

The first thing to know is that every white toilet roll has been bleached in some way. There aren't any bright white materials you can use to make toilet paper, or any type of paper for that matter. 

But not all bleaching processes are the same, so when you pick up a roll of white toilet paper, how do you know what process or chemicals got it that way? And when we say we are "bleach-free" at Naked Paper, what exactly do we mean? 

Sun bleaching

We’ll get the most natural method out of the way first; sun bleaching. 

If you leave something outside for long enough the sun will strip the colour from it.

Wood, shells, bones; anything left in the open for months or years gradually turns paler. This is the “sun-bleached” look that’s characterises the gentle colours of the UK coastline. It comes from UV light breaking down pigments, and it's the reason why old plastic garden chairs take on a chalky tinge, and why your hair might look lighter after a summer in the sun.

It won't surprise you to learn that white toilet paper isn’t bleached by the sun. With the average person in the UK getting through 127 rolls per year, it would take a long time to strip all that colour, never mind the space you'd need to lay out all those sheets. 

Okay, sun bleaching is out. On to bleaching method two. 

Washing and detergents

Another way to strip colour from something is to wash it repeatedly. You’ve probably seen it happen to your favourite jeans. Enough rounds in the washing machine and colour fades because the soap and water gradually break down the dyes in the fabric.

Toilet paper gets a wash at the pulp stage to remove impurities. This is particularly important when you're making recycled toilet paper out of paper waste that might have inks or glues that would undermine the quality of the tissue or damage the machines that make it. You can learn more about how we clean our pulp to make Naked Paper here. 

Washing is essential, but this stage is generally a simple, single treatment. It’s nowhere near harsh enough, or repeated often enough, to strip colours from raw materials. 

With the gentle options of sun and soap ruled out, what options are left for those blindingly white rolls? 

Chemical bleaching

When toilet paper manufacturers make white toilet paper, they use chemical bleaching, and there are a few different combinations of chemicals to choose from. 

Up until the 1990s most paper, including toilet paper, was bleached using chlorine gas. But after a wave of research showing the devastating impact of the paper industry on animal and plant life in the rivers near paper mills, manufacturers started to move to other bleaching methods. These are:

• ECF (Elemental Chlorine Free) Bleaching: Uses chlorine compounds to remove colour, but not chlorine gas. This is less harmful to the environment than older methods but it's still a bleaching process.

• TCF (Totally Chlorine Free) Bleaching: Uses oxygen-based chemicals instead of chlorine, like peroxide or ozone. 

Both of these methods are understood to be less damaging than the terrible harms caused by chlorine gas, but whether ECF or TCF bleaching is superior is open to debate. A 1994 study looking at the run-off from factories using TCF and ECF bleaching methods was not able to find any significant difference when it came to the toxicity levels of the rivers these factories fed into.

But if all white toilet paper has been whitened with chemicals, why do you sometimes see white rolls described as "bleach free"? 

Can you make white toilet paper "bleach-free?"

It probably won't surprise you to learn that toilet paper makers don't always agree with each other. Some will say wrapping rolls is essential for keeping moisture out, others (like us) keep theirs nude. Some say a plush 3 ply finish is essential, others prioritise quick disintegration. 

And one big disagreement is what counts as "bleaching." Some paper manufacturers say “bleach” only means chlorine based bleaches, so white toilet paper treated with peroxide can be described as bleach-free.

We disagree. As far as we're concerned, if you’ve used chemicals to strip the colour from your raw materials, you’ve bleached it. 

It's the everyday, common-sense meaning of the word. When we say someone has bleached their hair, we mean they've chemically lightened it. The fact that they have used peroxide and not chlorine doesn't change matters; the word "bleach" refers to any chemical used to strip colour.   

At Naked Paper we want to be part of a move to more positive, transparent manufacturing practices, and we believe it's important to describe our products and the way we make them in clear, simple terms. 

So when we say "no bleach," we don't mean one particular chemical, we mean all of them.

Naked Paper is actually unbleached

We're all for challenging convention, but if a word has been used the same way for hundreds of years, we're happy to stick with it. When we say our toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, and tissues are not bleached at Naked Paper, we mean it in the most straightforward way. 

They're not "whitened," they're not "decolourised." We don’t use ECF bleach. We don’t use TCF bleach either. No chlorine, no peroxide, no ozone. We don’t leave our rolls out in the sun for months, and we don’t put them through an aggressive spin cycle.

We don’t remove the natural brown colour from the pulp that we use, and that's why our toilet paper comes in the colour of the materials, raw bamboo pulp or recycled cardboard boxes. That’s what unbleached means to us.

Want to try tissue products that are bleach-free, however you define it?