Speaker 1 0:02
Do you know where your toilet roll comes from? And if you do, can you definitely trust the manufacturers claims? How can you avoid getting taken in by greenwash hogwash. Today, I'll be joined by Rob Harrison, the co founder of ethical consumer, and which is owned at Lisa Webb. And together, we'll make sure you don't get caught short. I'm Harry kind.
Unknown Speaker 0:21
And I'm Grace Forell.
Speaker 1 0:22
And this is Get Answers, for living your best consumer life
Speaker 2 0:25
Now before we start, I just want to give a shout out to Patrick who emailed us he said I love get answers and the witch money pod. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Patrick. Honestly, that means so much to us. If you ever want to get in touch with us, just email [email protected] and likewise, if you've got questions that you'd like us to answer, send them our way.
Speaker 1 0:50
Well, Lisa, Rob, thanks for joining us to answer some questions about toilet roll of all things. This is kind of coming off the back of an investigation that we did here at Which? exposed that a number of bamboo toilet paper brands were falling well short of their sustainability claims. Now, Lisa, you're often on the pod as a host here, but your actual day job. You're a lawyer, you were kind of up to your toilet rolls in this what actually happened with this research, can you give us the kind of the general bare bones of it.
Speaker 3 1:23
So we were looking at fibre composition testing on five different really popular brands of loo roll who claimed that their products are either 100% bamboo or bamboo only. And we took samples from these five brands: bumboo, naked sprout bazoo, who gives a crap and cheeky panda. And actually, what we found was pretty shocking. Astonishingly, some of the samples we looked at contained hardly any bamboo, one only had 2.7% bamboo in it. So samples from bamboo was just 2.7%. Naked sprout only had 4% bamboo in it. And bumboo had 26.1% bamboo in it. Now cheeky panda and who gives a crap both did brilliantly both had 100% bamboo, as they claimed,
Unknown Speaker 2:20
that is ridiculous. Well, yeah, Lisa,
Unknown Speaker 2:22
what was in them then if there wasn't bamboo? Well,
Speaker 3 2:25
actually, we found a few different things. That actually a lot of the time we were seeing virgin pulp, but also things like eucalyptus, and Acacia. Rob might talk to us a little bit about why that might be problematic. But what we're worried about here is that it's not bamboo, whether it's acacia, whether it's eucalyptus, whatever it is, if people are being told this is a bamboo product, and you're buying it because it's good for the environment. Actually, it should be what it says it is on the packet. And what we found was, it just wasn't?
Speaker 1 2:59
Well, Rob, there's bring you in briefly here. Can you say why you would actually want to have bamboo toilet paper? Presumably it's not an issue of being softer or somehow fragrantly scented, like a lovely Chinese meal. It's more to do with sustainability. Is that right?
Speaker 4 3:14
Yeah, it is. I mean, it wasn't top of our list of sustainable choices, which was it was kind of trumped by recycled paper. So when you kind of go through all the various options, it wasn't the best option anyway. But we figured it was better than what we thought of virgin pulp out of ordinary trees chopped down in Canada as a rule. And
Speaker 2 3:32
do you mind giving us just a brief overview of what we mean when we say virgin wood? Or hardwood or softwood? What are the differences? And how do they affect toilet paper? Why would you want one over the other?
Speaker 4 3:44
What we mean by Virgin wood is essentially a tree has been felled, taken to the paper mill broken up into its fibers and then made directly into toilet paper. And so there's nothing between the tree and the toilet paper, if you see what I mean. And
Speaker 1 3:58
that wood is that usually grown specifically for, you know, in a plantation with the intention of it ultimately becoming toilet paper or is this you know, as Lisa was saying, often a case of deforestation, and it's not a managed woodland. Well, this
Speaker 4 4:12
is the point. This is why we've seen accreditation schemes for forest supply chains grow up in this space to try and answer your questions really, because, you know, it turned out that lots of people who claim that it was a managed plantation or in fact deforesting, you know, old growth rainforest and all this kind of stuff, which was why the accreditation schemes like Forest Stewardship Council grew up in that space.
Speaker 2 4:35
But we've got an issue here haven't really set because I'm sure the toilet roll brands, most of the toilet roll brands that we looked at, were FSC certified. So if that's the case, how come they were found to contain such a lack of bamboo?
Speaker 3 4:51
Yeah, and actually, we reported our findings to the FSC who have told us that they're really concerned about these findings and they have actually alerted this Supply Chain integrity team. And they've said that they're going to be working with the businesses to ensure that the findings are fully investigated. Also whether or not any action needs to be taken here. Now, we didn't actually investigate the FSC certification itself, or the supply chains, we were only looking at the end product. But the thing with this FSC certification is it only really certifies a snapshot in time, an audit can only really capture that one independent moment in time, it can't really speak for the rigor of the full manufacturing process on a daily basis. So if something does go wrong on one day in the manufacturing process, that could have an impact further down the line. So that's why FSC is looking into this to see what could have gone wrong. Like you said, all of the brands have said, Look, we rely on FSC certification here. That's why we assume our stuff is good. And so it's really concerning for everyone. But
Speaker 1 6:00
I mean, let's get down to brass tacks on this, they said 100% bamboo, and some of these have about as you're saying, a quarter of 10% of bamboo, that is just basically you're not offering what you're supposed to be offering if something is supposed to be 100%. I don't know, cocoa chocolate, and it's 2% cocoa chocolate that is not providing what they have said it should provide, you know, what is their defense for how have they come back on this? Well, different
Speaker 3 6:28
brands have responded differently to us. So two of them did pretty well. So who gives a crap and cheeky panda both came out with 100%. Bamboo, they told us their product was 100% bamboo, and we tested it and it was 100% bamboo, happy days, we're all really pleased that they're telling us the truth when it comes to the product. But we saw from bamboo naked sprout and Bezu very low or low levels of bamboo like grass fibers. And those are the ones where I said bamboo was 2.7%, naked sprout 4% Bamboo 26.1%. Now those three all did poorly in the tests, but they didn't all respond the same way. So bamboo looked into it, they actually said that they'd identified an issue in their supply chain. And what they did was they looked at what had been going wrong. And actually, they've told us that they've taken action to make sure it can't happen again. So hopefully, going forward, you won't be seeing those types of results with bamboo again. So we're saying we haven't gone back and retested bamboo to make sure that this is all accurate. But that's quite a positive response, I think from that brand. So Bas, who told us that because of its FSC auditing, it thought that it was going to be really confident in its supply chain. And it did point to the FSC certified manufacturers that they use, and they check an audit every six months. Now, what I said earlier was those audits are only a snapshot in time. So if you only do that once every six months, it's a daily impact check, then actually, you might find that things are slipping through the net. But bad news told us that they're investigating what's gone wrong there. They're talking with the FSC as well. And it's manufacturer to make sure that that can't happen again. Now, the last one was a company called Naked sprout who actually they were announced as the official toilet roll supplier for Glastonbury Festival this year. Now, naked sprout took a different approach. They actually said the test that we use can't be used for their product. They claim that it's not objective. I mean, my response to that is that is a globally recognized industry benchmark. We think the test results are absolutely fine. And actually, the technical association of the pulp and paper industry responded and said that they saw absolutely no contradictions in our application test method. And they actually thought it was little bit disingenuous of naked sprout to suggest that the test method could be applied successfully to other brands, but not for naked sprout. So they have not tried to do anything about the results. They haven't sort of suggested that they're going to look into it. They've just said, now your tests are rubbish. And we don't believe you.
Speaker 1 9:12
Rob, is this kind of blatant gap between what people are being told about their toilet paper? And what actually is the case surprising to you? Or is this something the kind of thing that you've come to expect? I
Speaker 4 9:23
mean, you know, in a sense, you feel some sympathy for the brands who have gone with the best certification in the room, been told that it's okay. And then they find out that they've been selling rubbish, or that it's the certification system that's letting them down. So I don't think there's necessarily knowingly greenwashing in this space is kind of unconsciously greenwashing because we thought we were doing the right thing, but it turned out that we weren't because the the certification system was a bit poor. Well, as I say, you know, the naked sprout response does look like it could do with some improvement. The thing
Speaker 3 9:56
that's really important to remember here is yes, of course sustainability. Here's an issue. And yes, of course, we want to be able to make sure that the products contain the best possible ingredients. But actually, there's a wider issue here with, for example, greenwashing. Now, we're not saying that this is a deliberate greenwashing effect. But if consumers think they're getting one thing, and they're spending perhaps more money on that, because they think it's better, whether that's for the environment or for other reasons, but actually, it's not, then those consumers are being misled. And whether that's a deliberate, misleading or not, it's still misleading. And there are plenty of rules out there around not misleading consumers, you know, we've got the consumer protection regulations out there. They explicitly say, you cannot mislead a consumer in claims about a product, you have to be selling them what you tell them it is. And if you're not doing that, then there are questions to answer that. And I think it's something that we're seeing, not just in Louisville, we're seeing claims all over the shop, from lots of different brands. They like to Bandy around words like green or sustainable, because, frankly, it's a bit fashionable these days, and it does encourage people to buy a product. But if you're going to use claims like that, you're going to tell people that something is 100%. Bamboo, you better make sure it is
Speaker 1 11:26
could there potentially be any legal repercussions here for these companies? And further companies that do this? How do companies just keep getting away with this?
Speaker 3 11:34
Well, there are laws around this, like I said, consumer protection law for any company that makes any sort of false environmental claims, for example, or if they're using unauthorized eco logos, or if they're just misleading shoppers into thinking that products are greener than they really are. Now, the Competition and Markets Authority, the CMA, and trading standards might bring court proceedings against companies that they find doing this sort of thing. But equally, there's something called the Advertising Standards Authority, which CSA that's a regulator for advertising. Now, the HSA is, how do I put this a bit tipless, it doesn't really have huge amounts of authority to be able to find any companies. But what they can do is name and shame companies for making misleading green claims. And you will find on their website, any companies that they find doing the wrong thing get named and shamed on there. And that in itself can have quite an impact on reputation for companies. So there are organizations out there regulators out there who can do something about this. And if you're an individual and you fancy a bit of a vigilante claim against any of these companies, and you think you're being misled, then there are laws out there to protect you. And to prevent them doing that. Well.
Speaker 2 12:51
I'd love to know more about the ways you can actually spot greenwashing more generally, to get back to loo roll. I mean, I wonder are we kind of missing a point here by focusing on bamboo so much? I mean, even if companies are having 100% Bamboo and their toilet roll is actually recycled toilet roll better, or perhaps doing away with toilet roll together and using a bday? I mean, Rob, do you have any opinions on that?
Speaker 4 13:15
I mean, this when ethical consumer magazine did our review of it about a year ago, that was the conclusion that we came to that bamboo, although interesting and slightly less impact than mainstream toilet paper was a bit of a distraction. And in fact, that kind of lowest energy, lowest impact stuff was what we call post consumer waste, recycled toilet paper, which is hard to find. But you can find it out there. If you look closely enough and pay attention to the post consumer waste labels, if
Speaker 2 13:44
you see what I mean. What does that mean Rob, post consumer waste,
Speaker 4 13:47
so you can label your products as recycled paper. If it's made of off cuts from the industry, for example, when you're putting together you know, you're printing a book or something and there's loads of stuff left on the floor, sweep it up, put it into a thing. So basically, industry off carts are often used in in recycled paper manufacture, not least because they're you know, they're quite high quality at that point, because they've been used for anything. However, it does make sense, you know, particularly as you say, with toilet paper, something that's used once and then thrown down the drain, not to be using really anything of high quality at all, if you can get away with it. And so, post consumer waste, it's been used as newspaper printing, cardboard, all sorts of stuff. So it's come from the boxes that are collected outside your door, or the things in the street that you've put your consumer waste into. So ideally, that's the best place for toilet paper to come from, in our view.
Speaker 2 14:40
And presumably, I suppose, but anyone who's listening at home thinking, or do I want to be wiping my bum with sort of post consumer waste paper? Presumably it goes through all sorts of treatment processes, and it's perfectly hygienic.
Speaker 4 14:53
Yeah, of course it is. And you know, I mean, I think this was one of the issues when recycled toilet paper first hit them market I guess was in the 1990s, when some of the small green niche companies were experimenting with it, I think they found in customer research that people didn't like the idea of post consumer waste recycle paper, a funny name, right in the context of toilet paper. And you know, in theory, you ought to be able to kind of disassociate all those ideas in your head, but, but it didn't work well with the marketing. But ultimately, that's part of our job, perhaps as consumer publishers to educate people to go, actually, don't worry about this, this is fine. Because this is the best way to have the lowest impact. I
Speaker 3 15:35
think in my head, I do sort of, and I know this isn't true. And I know this is a total just made up in my own head. But postconsumer waste sometimes makes me think someone else's wipe their bum and then just handed it to me, for me to use that source of what it feels like. That term sort of makes you think, Oh, I'm just using someone else's loo roll after they've used it.
Speaker 4 15:56
This is what the focus groups told the big companies when they look to move into this, which is why they're not using or making those claims or using this stuff.
Speaker 3 16:04
Okay, what I would like though, one of those Japanese lose that washes you bum for you, a bday or a bday. Yeah, but the Japanese ones, they do all sorts of fancy stuff, don't they? You can have warm water, you can have lovely warm air centers, exactly. There's in Peckham, there were there was pre lockdown might not be there anymore, but there was a sack a bar that had a Japanese loo and Oh, my goodness, I just used to go there just to use the loo it was brilliant.
Speaker 1 16:29
On that, how big a deal is toilet roll in this, you know, we're all doing our bit for sustainability. If we switch to, you know, a bamboo toilet roll, we spent a bit of money on going to recycled toilet roll is ultimately that we're going to be wiped out of our whole lives work by just one extra holiday to Athens, that really is not actually having that much impact.
Speaker 4 16:50
I mean, yes, in a sense, that is true. But then it's also true, that everything that you do has some impact, and minimizing all of it does make sense. But it's you know, I guess it's not an excuse to have an extra holiday to ASMs as if I use recycled. I mean, this is one of the problems if you'd like with reducing consumer impacts. Because when consumers think like made it, you know, like a TV, whatever the the electrical industry has managed to reduce usage and consumption lots. And what's happened is that everyone now has massive TVs and massive fridges. So in fact, overall consumption has actually gone up, even though industry is doing great things in reducing the amount of energy used in products. So you have to be careful not to kind of copy things across from other activities. Well,
Speaker 2 17:39
it's a particular problem in the UK, actually. Because according to statistics, the average person uses 127 rolls of toilet paper a year, which is more than twice the European average and the third highest in the world. It's
Speaker 1 17:51
interesting, you'd have to disaggregate that between girls and boys. Right? I thought it'd be like the major thing. This is actually a woman's problem. I know what I'm putting all the blame, but I'm gonna guess statistically, you're talking about like a two to one toilet roll ratio?
Speaker 2 18:05
I don't know, because I think women are more likely to fold rather than scrub, less toilet roll. If you fold it, then it
Speaker 1 18:11
would be a great use of polling. If we could get someone getting the data in the field to find this out. Should we go for a break and come back and talk about greenwashing more generally? This week on get answers, we're staying glamorous and talking loo roll. But in the weeks to come, we'll be looking at ticket scams AI, and we might even take on the mighty airfryer. Get your questions in at podcast at which dot code at UK.
Speaker 2 18:37
Lisa, what actually is greenwashing. How do we define that? So
Speaker 3 18:41
messages basically from brands and businesses are always trying to persuade us that their products, the one that's worth buying, and I think when a company is trying to tell you that they're doing more to protect the planet than they really are. That's when we call it greenwashing because that's what can mislead shoppers into thinking they're making sustainable choices, when actually they're really not.
Speaker 2 19:07
And what are some of the most common examples that you tend to see of greenwashing?
Speaker 3 19:12
Well, a lot of the time you'll hear people actually use or see people using the word green, or they'll just cover the color green all over their products. So you'll see just a product being covered in green plastic, for example, and you just think, well, that's a bit controversial. It's plastic, but it's green. So the word green gets used a lot. So does the word sustainable. And in fact, there really isn't much of a definition for what that means. So those types of words to look out for I think you might also see things like bunny rabbits and lambs and lovely meadows with flowers in them and a lovely blue sky with sunshine in it in their marketing because those are all sorts of things that evoke the idea of a lovely clean country. Besides, that hasn't been impacted by all of the plastic that's washing up on shores. So those are the sorts of things to look for. Lisa,
Speaker 2 20:07
you raised a really interesting point. And I'd like to go back to that. I mean, it's buzzwords like natural, eco friendly, they don't actually have a legal definition today. And I know that the word organic is strictly regulated in the food industry. But it isn't actually regulated in the toiletries industry. And so it's really important that you actually look for an accompanying certification, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 3 20:30
And those certifications are important. We did talk about the FSC certification earlier when we were discussing the testing that we did. And yes, of course, what we found does slightly impact whether or not we think it's hugely reliable, but it's still more reliable than no certification. And so I do think it's still important to look for these types of certifications like FSC, if it's a paper based product. Now, there are other words, I mentioned, sustainable gets bandied around a lot. And it's not just loo roll. We know, for example, lots of clothing brands like to call themselves sustainable, because they, for example, use recycled plastic bottles in their clothing brands in the material they use. But actually, I think there's quite a lot of evidence out there to suggest that a plastic bottle can be recycled numerous times before it becomes redundant. But as soon as it gets turned into clothing, that's going to be the end of its lifecycle. So actually, is that any more sustainable? So using words like that can be really misleading?
Speaker 2 21:35
And plastic makes me think of the packaging that our toiletries come in? I mean, I suppose you want the least amount possible. It's not always that papers better than plastic? I suppose it's all sorts of things like how easy is it to recycle? How clear is it on the label how you recycle that product? Or is it better to just go for things that you can sort of refill and have no packaging at all. And
Speaker 1 21:57
there's some suggestion that even reducing packaging could have a country effect to what you'd want. So getting rid of a plastic wrap on broccoli, for example, might mean that it's more likely to be damaged in transit it like last less long in the in the supermarket in your house, and therefore ends up as food waste. And so you've got to balance that plastic waste with the food waste for some people. And so even just a big shiny refill scheme might just be a bit of greenwashing from a supermarket to make you think, Oh, I'm doing my bit.
Speaker 2 22:30
It's just so hard to know, isn't it? It's just a complete minefield, one of the
Speaker 4 22:33
things that annoys us particularly is recycle level, if you put that on your packaging, you find that a lot, which in a sense, in our view is just kind of placing the problem onto the consumer. And it's not really solving a problem is just going, you could be sustainable, but it has nothing to do with us. And it's everything to do with you. If you see what I mean. And this is this, we often find that on plastic packaging. And that's not really very helpful. I think what is helpful is sometimes you can see if it's made with recycled plastic, that's good, because we're beginning to kind of close the loop. So if we were looking out for made with recycled plastic, which is better, but there's a kind of hierarchy of better isn't the, you know, refillable is great, non plastic is great. And then recycled plastic, and then recyclable plastic and right at the bottom is plastic that isn't even recyclable. But I think depending on how explicit your claims are, how big your claims are, can be a bit misleading if they're down the bottom of that tree.
Speaker 1 23:36
And this might be a bit of an existential question here, Rob, but to what extent do you think that consumer choice and us picking a bamboo toilet roll over a regular toilet roll, recyclable products versus non recyclable products has long lasting impact versus things like regulation, or broader kind of government effort? Where actually you just say, there isn't acceptable anymore to produce things with this kind of plastic? Do consumers actually make that kind of long lasting difference?
Speaker 4 24:07
It's a super interesting question. And it is much much better to have regulation it happened particularly over stuff like carbon that we need to fix quickly. It's really really bad policy to kind of try and, you know, get consumers on their own solve climate change, because it ain't gonna happen and ain't gonna happen quickly enough. And what we have to do is download the worst stuff and and make the other stuff cheaper and more available. And in a sense, some people you know, lots of countries are doing that around subsidies for electric cars and all this kind of stuff. So it's not rocket science, and it's quite well known
Unknown Speaker:as long as they truly contain what they say.
Unknown Speaker:That is the help. Yes,
Speaker 2 24:43
I think that's a good one to end on. But I'd really like to go back and just see if there are any more pieces of advice we can give for ways you can tell a product really is sustainable and eco friendly. I wonder if either of you are able to talk on other certifications like B Corp, Cosmos nature true stuff that's free of parabens, phthalates. I never know how to say that. And
Speaker 1 25:09
just things to avoid, like, what are your like complete? No goes?
Speaker 4 25:12
I would say it's really, really complicated. People are only just beginning to open the box on what constitutes, you know, sustainable. You know, in lots of these questions, people were still kind of learning as humans. So first stage is to look for independent verification. Second is to learn a little bit about independent verification from very fine publishers like ethical consumer, and which who will be able to tell you a little bit about you know, where quality lies in that space. I
Speaker 2 25:38
think a really good source for accreditation is the Eco label index. And so we'll include a link to that in the show notes, because that kind of has a list of, of all the ones that you're likely to see and exactly what they mean. Rubs
Speaker 3 25:49
mentioned seeking out third party verification, but I think if you can't find the sustainability data you need, or you think the information you're being given by a brand might not be right. Ask them, it's completely fine for you to ask questions. And I think social media is actually really great for that, because you can quiz companies on their social media feeds publicly, and then they're expected to answer you there and then in front of everyone, and it means that other consumers can also see what their answers are. It means as well that their answers or lack of answers, if they're failing to answer about it, is brought into the wider domain. So I think if you've got any questions at all about the sustainability or the environmental friendliness of any product, go on to that brand social media feed and ask them about it, because they should absolutely be shouting it from the rooftops, if they're proud about it.
Speaker 1 26:48
Well, on that note, I presume if people want to find out more about how to generally be a better eco, consumer and ethical consumer generally, where can they find out more about about you, Robin and ethical consumer?
Speaker 4 27:01
Yeah, just go to ethical consumer magazine website. There's lots of stuff there as we're putting stuff out every day. Fantastic.
Speaker 1 27:07
Lisa. Rob, thank you so much for joining us this week. If
Speaker 2 27:11
you want to read the full report on our toilet roll investigation, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1 27:19
Next time on get answers. We'll be taking a trip to the tortured fans department to look at live ticketing. How can you avoid getting ripped off on third tickets? And can we actually stop the big ticket touts please do get in touch with your questions. Email us at podcast at which Dakota UK or say hello on social media. We're at which UK on all the main channels
Speaker 2 27:39
and we'd love it if you could leave us a rating and a review is a really effective way to show support for our podcast, as it helps us get recommended to new listeners. Today's get
Speaker 1 27:48
answers was presented by me Harry kind alongside Grace Forell, produced by Robert Lilley Jones and Adrian Bradley, recorded by Adrian and edited by Erik Bria and thanks again to our wonderful guests, Rob Harrison and Lisa Webb. We'll see you next time. Bye bye