Something Organic

FALLING IN LOVE WITH BAMBOO

I fell in love with bamboo while searching for material to make a more sustainable fashion legging. I was keen on using bamboo yarns to make seamless compression leggings but couldn’t make them work - the yarns that met my performance expectations were too costly. Which meant having to nearly double my retail price - that wouldn’t work either. Bamboo for leggings, were out. But now that I knew about bamboo...I couldn’t let it go.

It was while cleaning up episode 145 of my, then 4 year olds, loo roll mishap - he was known for flushing full rolls of toilet paper down the loo! - that I had an aha moment. What about using bamboo as toilet paper?

WHY BAMBOO?

I had to research this further and what I found was staggering. We cut down 27,000 trees each day just to wipe our bums and worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day! Growing populations and improvements in sanitation in globally is only increasing the demand for toilet paper. Behind the scenes, toilet tissue production is destroying ecologically important boreal forests and exacerbating forest degradation and loss, climate change, and the biodiversity crisis.

What I realised was that Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants and is helping rapidly restore forest cover. In fact it is included in the UN target for countries to use bamboo as a source to improve forest cover by as much as 10%.

Bamboo grows 10-20x faster than trees. It can grow up to 3feet a day and when bamboo is harvested, it will continue to grow new shoots from its amazing root system.

This root system helps prevent soil erosion and can help degraded lands come back to life and support forest cover.Bamboo also grows naturally and organically - there is no need for fertilisers, herbicides, or pesticides and consumes less water.

COST EFFECTIVE

But I had a big challenge? How to make the product so that it was cost-effective and not wasteful (4-year olds aren’t the only ones throwing too much TP down the loo). With time and testing, I created a product that was, per sheet, less expensive than the average brand on the market. And because it was 3-ply ( i.e 3 layers of sheets), would require fewer sheets per use.

SUSTAINABLE GOOD FOR THE PLANET & TOILET

I wanted to create a product that was sustainable. A product that would encourage my customers to buy well (not more). A product that didn’t break the bank and that didn’t compromise my values. I couldn’t use bamboo for leggings, but I could use it to make planet and people friendly TP. And that’s, Something Cheeky Loo roll by Something Organic

Shamanth
Founder