Who Gives A Crap (WGAC) is one example of taking sustainability and making it attractive. They are a small-medium company known for their recycled toilet paper, and capturing their customers with visually engaging packaging. WGAC is known for its socially responsible products, and its commitment to improving global sanitation. Founded by Simon Griffiths, WGAC operates under the parent company Good Good Holdings, WGAC boasts an impressive B Corp Impact score of 125.5, a significant increase from its original score of 101.1 in 2016. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this B Corp-certified brand stand out in the realm of social, environmental, and employer impact.
WGAC aims to tackle several key issues. The first is deforestation, to combat the deforestation associated with traditional toilet paper production. WGAC uses post-consumer paper from schools and offices close to their production facilities to reuse this paper, and also produce bamboo rolls which are faster growing plants and therefore associated with less deforestation.
Improving Global Sanitation
A whopping 50% of WGAC profits are donated to providing clean water and sanitation, WGAC addresses a critical global issue. Over £7 million has been raised to date, directly impacting billions of people lacking access to basic sanitation facilities. These issues disproportionately affect women, girls, and people with disabilities, often resulting in life-threatening situations and disruptions to daily life, with women spending an average of 200 million hours walking to collect water. WGAC’s partnerships with nonprofits like Splash, Water For People, and WaterAid amplify their impact by constructing toilets and creating sustainable, long-term solutions in under-served communities worldwide.
From an environmental perspective, untreated waste is also a contributor of methane gas emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that gets less coverage than carbon dioxide. Water and sanitation sectors account for almost 2% of global GHGs, equivalent to that of the entire aeroplane industry. Treating waste properly and sustainably can therefore have a huge impact on air, and water.
WGAC partners with several non-profits to address the issue of constructing toilets, engaging with non-profits with expertise on this issue:
Partner | Focus | Description |
Splash | Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Services for Children | Provides WASH services to children in densely populated cities. Aims to reach 100% of schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kolkata, India, impacting over 1 million children. |
Fresh Life | Eco-Friendly, Waterless Toilets | Offers eco-friendly, waterless toilets in urban Kenyan communities. Works with residents for safe waste treatment, converting waste into products like organic fertilizer and biofuel. |
Water for People | Long-term Access to Water and Sanitation | Works across multiple countries to ensure sustainable WASH services. Engages local governments and communities to maintain and operate water and sanitation systems long-term. |
WaterAid | Gender-Inclusive Sanitation and Menstrual Health | Focuses on creating gender-inclusive sanitation facilities and promotes menstrual health through advocacy and educational initiatives. Works with local governments on large-scale projects to improve sanitation. |
WSUP | Urban Water and Sanitation for the Poor | Supports local businesses and governments to expand WASH services in informal urban settlements. Works to prepare cities for urbanization and promotes climate-resilient sanitation solutions. |
Sanergy | Affordable Toilets and Local Entrepreneurship | Builds affordable toilets and empowers local entrepreneurs ("bathroom-preneurs") to operate them. Collects waste for treatment and conversion into fertilizer, creating sustainable income streams. |
Lwala | Community Health and Sanitation | Implements community-driven health and sanitation projects in Kenya, including health clinics and education programs. Helps locals develop businesses and improve access to water and sanitation facilities. |
SHOFCO | Water, Education, and Emergency Medical Care in Inner Cities | Known for innovative overhead water pipes to deliver clean water in Kenya’s inner cities. Provides access to clean water, education, and emergency medical care. |
iDE | Market-Based Sanitation Solutions | Builds “sanitation markets” by partnering with local entrepreneurs to develop sustainable sanitation systems tailored to specific community needs. Promotes economic revitalization through local business development. |
Using sustainable materials
WGAC prioritises the use of sustainable materials in their products to combat deforestation and reduce carbon emission. They produce virgin tree toilet paper which means it’s made using fibres direct from trees, rather than from recycled or alternative materials. Virgin forests are naturally occurring forest ecosystems that have grown for a long time sometimes over 100 years, and sadly a lot of the world’s toilet paper is made using trees cut from these old-growth forests, which can lead to mass deforestation and, thanks to all the carbon that’s released, can have a devastating impact on the climate. Although native forests forests are generally protected from harvesting, illegal logging does still occur in some places. This is partly because of the pressure to produce more and more paper products.
Bamboo is a more sustainable pulp over traditional wood pulp simply because it grows faster (3-4 years compared to 10-40 years for trees) and can be harvested more frequently, which means as a result bamboo toilet paper requires almost 90% less land per finished sheet to produce. WGAC therefore offers a bamboo roll. The company is transparent about the fact that their bamboo is produced in the Sichuan region in China, grown by local farmers and systems are in place to only grow the bamboo on the edge of family properties to supplement their income. The company makes it clear that they are pursuing options for local manufacture, but emphasises that manufacture in China should not be stigmatised, particularly given that bamboo is native to the country.
Their other product is the recycled roll, which comes from post-consumer paper sourced from schools, offices and other reused sources of paper, diverting waste from landfills and conserving forests. All WGAC also have biodegradable designs that ensure minimal environmental impact. Altogether WGAC (third party life cycle assessment) estimated that their rolls had a 22% lower carbon footprint than toilet paper made from virgin trees.
WGAC also has a “No Deforestation Commitment”, a voluntary promise to protect the planet’s forests. In July of 2023, the company gained full FSC Chain-of-custory certification which certified their entire supply chain from farm to warehouse. The Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) is a globally recognised organisation that promotes responsible forest management. FSC certification ensures that products (like our tissue products line) come from responsibly managed sources. WGAC is looking further to add the FSC certification label to all their paper products by 2025. To do this the company is committed to:
Continuing to eliminate all virgin fibre in their products
Ensure that their fibre based products are made only using recycled materials, FSC materials, sustainable alternative fibres e.g from ex agriculture waste, packaging materials are curbside recyclable.
Support R&D and commercialisation of pulp, paper and packaging from alternative fibre sources with a focus on using agricultural waste and recycled content.
Phase out the use of palm oil and palm oil derivatives or ensure any palm oil based ingredients used in products are not linked to deforestation by FY 2028.
Carbon footprint management
WGAC manages its carbon footprint by implementing various initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Their life cycle assessment carried out by a third party calculating the carbon footprint of their products, totalling (in metric tones) 70,605 CO2e in 2022. Of this, 60% of emissions cae from manufacturing, 20% from packaging, and another 20% from shipping. To combat this, the company targeted the 20% from shipping first, and made their shipping 100% carbon neutral. Although this method might not always be the best way forward, WGAC does this by calculating GHG emissions from transporting their products from the factory, to their customers, then purchasing carbon credits to match or offset those emissions. Essentially WGAC works with project developers including non profits to execute specific projects that produce carbon credits, then carbon brokers (WGAC uses Pachama) to carry out specialised carbon offsets.This initiative began in September 2020.
Other measures included more electrification, both in office and in the supply chain. WGAC installed solar panels on their Melbourne warehouse, generating 8000kWh per month, reducing electricity costs by 24% and providing 46% of the building's energy, and a projected avoidance of 112 tonnes of CO2e annually. They are also transitioning to electric vehicles for transportation in Australia.
The company is also looking to manufacture products more locally. In 2022 and 2023, they began producing goods domestically in the US and UK to reduce emissions associated with international shipping. The remaining issue is with bamboo rolls produced in China, which come with associated emissions due to their sea freight. The company argues that in reality, their sea freight does cover a greater distance, but actually comes out at lower emissions than their road freight locally because sea freight is more efficient from a carbon perspective - this is often the case where sea freight is more efficient than overland. The company is actively pursuing avenues for local manufacture however, and for this transport to occur by EVs, to eliminate this factor.
The bottom line
WGAC rolls actually work out at 23p/100 sheets (recycled rolls) ad 27p/100 sheets (bamboo), compared to an average of 35p/100 sheets for Andrex, a popular supermarket brand. They have definitely led the way in terms of sustainable material: with no virgin paper, B-corp certification, entirely vegan products, conscious packaging and chemical-free, and carbon neutral. Their only recent critique has been individually wrapping their rolls, which some see as wasteful, but the company put out a statement this year stating that their wrappers are a key element of their business model, to create eye-catching designs that attract more people to be conscious consumers, and individual wrapping was important from a hygiene perspective. Indeed, a good portion of the brand’s allure is thanks to its packaging, which highlights the nexus between profitable, sustainable, and aesthetic, though we think there’s still room for lightweighting their packaging.
References / Further reading
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