What's really in your toilet paper?
Here is the honest answer: nobody has to tell you. Toilet paper carries no ingredient label, and no law requires one. What follows is what the manufacturing process actually involves, what independent researchers have found, and what we chose instead.
It happens during manufacturing
The raw material isn't the problem. It's what happens to it at the factory — steps that most brands never talk about.
Pulping nothing disclosed
Wood pulp is broken down using industrial processing aids. None of them appear on the package, because none of them have to. When University of Florida researchers found PFAS in toilet paper from four continents in 2023, it was not as a listed ingredient — the likely routes are recycled fiber, mill equipment and packaging.
Bleaching a step you do not need
Toilet paper is bleached for one reason: to make it white. Bleaching with elemental chlorine produced dioxins, which is why US mills were moved onto chlorine dioxide by EPA rules in the 1990s — that change was made specifically to stop dioxin forming. The simpler point stands. It is an industrial chemical step performed for appearance, and it can be skipped.
Recycled content what rides along
Recycled toilet paper is made from collected waste paper, and thermal receipt paper ends up in that stream. Bisphenols — BPA and BPS — carry through into the finished roll. Recycled sounds greener, and for the forest it is, but it is the one input that reliably brings an endocrine disruptor with it.
Softening & finishing undisclosed
Lotions, fragrances and softening agents are applied to improve feel. A single word like “fragrance” can stand for dozens of separate chemicals, and the manufacturer is not obliged to name any of them. You cannot find out what is on the roll by reading the pack.
Our approach unbleached · bamboo · not recycled
Ours is unbleached bamboo. No bleaching step at all — you can see it in the color, and that is the whole proof. Bamboo rather than wood, so it is not coming off a forest. Virgin fiber rather than recycled, so there is no receipt paper in it. Wound on cardboard cores and wrapped in paper, not plastic.
What we will and will not claim
We are not going to tell you what is in anyone else’s roll. We have not tested theirs.
What you can check yourself
It is not white. That is not a design choice, it is the absence of a bleaching step, and it is the one claim on this page you can verify by opening the pack.
What we are not going to tell you
We are not going to put a number on what is in a competitor’s product, or claim our own roll is free of something we have not put in front of a laboratory. If you ask us for documentation on ours, we will send you what we have.
About the Florida study: the researchers measured PFAS in toilet paper and in sewage sludge. They did not name brands and did not assess health risk to users — the paper is about what toilet paper contributes to wastewater treatment. We cite it because it establishes that PFAS turns up in this product category, not because it says anything about any particular roll.
Why it matters for your health
Each of these has a documented health effect and a documented route into paper products. None of it is a claim about any particular brand.
PFAS — forever chemicals
PFAS barely break down in the body or the environment, which is how they earned the name. The class has been linked to cancer, reduced fertility, developmental effects in children and weaker vaccine response. For PFOA and PFOS the EPA has set a drinking water goal of zero — no level it considers safe.
Dioxins
Never added on purpose — formed as a byproduct when pulp was bleached with elemental chlorine. They build up in fat tissue and clear very slowly, and the WHO classifies the most toxic of them as a Group 1 human carcinogen. US mills moved to chlorine dioxide after EPA rules in the 1990s precisely to stop this, so modern bleaching is not the dioxin source it once was. We skip bleaching anyway.
BPA & BPS
Bisphenols leach into recycled toilet paper from thermal receipt paper that ends up in recycled pulp. They're endocrine disruptors — meaning they interfere with your body's hormone system. Linked to reproductive problems, early puberty, and breast cancer.
Fragrance & preservatives
Added to scented products, "fresh" varieties, and some lotion-infused brands. "Fragrance" on a label can represent dozens of undisclosed chemicals. Some are allergens, some are known irritants, and some contain phthalates — another class of hormone disruptors.
You deserve to know what's in it.
Nobody is required to tell you what is in your toilet paper. We would rather show you. Unbleached bamboo, nothing we cannot stand behind, and a company you can drive to. Made for Hawaiʻi, by Hawaiʻi.
Order Now