What is unbleached toilet roll?

To make any paper product you take a fibrous raw material, break it down, press it, and dry it. 

It's the same for making soft bamboo or recycled toilet paper, as it is for kitchen rolls or tissues. The basic facts of the process have been the same for centuries, though dozens of tweaks have been added over time; some of which have become standard for no good reason.

Today we’re talking about one of the most common tweaks that we skip at Naked Paper: adding bleach. 

Bleaching toilet rolls strips away the natural colour of the raw material, lightening the pulp before it’s made into tissue. All white toilet paper has been bleached in some way, but there’s more than one way to bleach a roll, and some people (like us!) don't bleach at all.

Let's take a closer look.

What is bleaching in toilet paper?

Bleaching removes or alters lignin, a natural compound in wood that binds cellulose fibres and gives wood its strength and colour. To make light-coloured tissue that won’t turn brown over time, lignin needs to be removed, and there are several ways to do this.

1. Elemental chlorine bleaching

Until the 1990s, chlorine gas was the standard bleaching method. It effectively removed lignin, but studies in the late 1980s linked elemental chlorine use to dioxins, compounds with serious environmental effects.

A 1991 Canadian report found that 75% of Canadian mills using chlorine discharged compounds at levels “acutely lethal” to fish, posing risks to aquatic ecosystems and potentially human health. This spurred the industry to seek safer alternatives, leading to Elemental Chlorine-Free methods.

2. Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) toilet paper

ECF bleaching uses chlorine dioxide instead of chlorine gas. Pulp can be exposed for a short time to slightly brighten it or longer for pure white tissue. This method removes lignin without producing the same harmful dioxins, though some environmental impact remains.

ECF is now the most common bleaching method. Some “naturally coloured” rolls are lightly bleached with this process.

Since the late 1990s, some manufacturers have moved beyond chlorine entirely.

3. Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) toilet paper

TCF methods use oxygen-based bleaches such as ozone, hydrogen peroxide, or oxygen to remove lignin without chlorine. These methods are less common than ECF but are standard in environmentally-conscious markets, especially in Europe.

Even TCF bleaching adds an extra industrial step with energy, water, and chemical use. If the effect is purely cosmetic, it’s worth asking whether it’s necessary. We think it’s not.

4. Bleach-free toilet paper

At Naked Paper we do not bleach our bamboo or recycled tissue products. Our raw materials are broken down, cleaned, and formed into rolls without altering the colour.

This means our tissue looks very different from bleached rolls, whether ECF or TCF. Here’s a truly unbleached Naked Paper sheet on top of a “naturally coloured” bamboo roll treated with ECF bleach.

We’re happy to do things differently if it means cutting out cosmetic tweaks that introduce extra stages to the industrial process, and extra chemical products that need to be manufactured, packaged, and transported. 

To borrow a quote, if you want Naked Paper rolls, you can have any colour, as long as it’s natural! 

Conclusion

The history of bleach is a big part of the story of paper. Moving away from elemental chlorine with ECF was a big step, and TCF is an even cleaner option.

But we’ve chosen an even simpler approach. Whitening our raw materials would add extra manufacturing and chemical processes with no real benefit, so we skip it entirely.

If you want to learn more about what’s in Naked Paper, check out our ingredient round-up. And if you want to join team unbleached, we’d love to have you with us.