Chris, Cemal, Richard and Martin, our founding team, have eight children between them and were becoming increasingly concerned about climate change and the world their children would inherit when they reached adulthood. They wanted to do something that would make a positive difference and Serious was born. A company that sets out to create products with a minimum footprint and maximum positive impact.
We created the UK’s most sustainable toilet roll. UK made (rather than shipped from China) from recycled paper and plastic free. We also make a positive impact by planting trees with every sale and since launch we have planted over 1m trees which you can see on our tree planting dashboard.
You can get a free sample here.
Most toilet roll used in the UK is made from virgin pulp. That is basically trees that have grown for over 20 years being cut down to make toilet roll. Over one million trees are cut down every day for toilet roll across the world.
We think this is one million too many. Trees should never be a single use product when they serve such an important purpose by capturing carbon and providing so many other benefits such as providing habitats for wildlife, fighting coastal erosion and improving water retention in dry areas.
Serious Tissues are made from recycled paper (also known as post consumer waste) - no trees are harmed in the making of this product. We use recycled paper - from newspapers, cereal boxes, etc. - instead of bamboo because the carbon footprint is smaller, and we don’t have to ship the bamboo from China. We’re produced in the UK and the source material is also from within the UK.
We make our product from recycled paper (post-consumer waste), providing a circular solution and ensuring that paper used in people’s home and office goes onto have another use.
The National Resource Defence Council (NRDC), in their Issue with Tissue Report, state that recycled paper has a lower environmental footprint than bamboo.
That's because bamboo - wonderfully resilient, self-growing, and low-maintenance as it is — is too often planted on recently deforested land, because it doesn't promote biodiversity in the way hardwood does, and because it's most often imported from China, the bamboo capital of the world. This means it needs to be shipped 20,000km to reach the UK.
While the FSC does have a bamboo centric certification meant to ensure sustainable practices, the legitimacy and effectiveness of said certification has received criticism because bamboo is a grass rather than a tree.
Bamboo production, like the production of many alternative fibre plants, often lacks robust supply chain monitoring.
Serious Tissues are made from UK post consumer use recycled paper.
Post-consumer recycled paper embodies the circular economy. It’s manufactured from recycled products that have served a purpose for end-users, then sold on the market where it again serves a useful purpose, and then can be recycled again. It goes to market and back in a sustainable manner. It is fed by the recycling bins people fill with waste paper, such as magazines, newspapers, promotional materials, packaging, boxes and office documents.
Serious Tissues are manufactured in the midlands. By producing in the UK we’re also able to reduce the carbon footprint of our toilet paper. Our loo roll is made from recycled paper and without any unnecessary chemicals (dyes, perfumes, etc.)
Our toilet rolls are packed as simply and ecologically as possible. We don’t use plastic or any unnecessary individual packaging. Your toilet roll will even be delivered in a fully recycled and recyclable cardboard box.
In the past, we proudly planted one tree for every roll of toilet paper sold. It was a simple and effective way to contribute to reforestation and fight climate change. However, we hit a hurdle when tree planting prices surged by a staggering 500%.
One of the founding principles of Serious was that simple eco switches shouldn’t break the bank. We’re still cheaper sheet-for-sheet than big-name brands you find in the supermarket. So we needed to evolve our impact model.
Moving forwards we’re going to taking a mixed approach to impact and investing in multiple projects, not just tree planting. We know that impact numbers can sometimes feel abstract. That's why we're shifting our focus to measuring our impact primarily in total carbon as a proportion of your carbon footprint.
Our toilet paper will continue to plant trees, including mangrove in Kenya, trees in Britain through the Tree Council, and agroforestry in projects in Africa. Despite the price increases, tree planting remains the most cost-effective way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
We're also investing in renewables infrastructure in the UK. Partly because the reduction in carbon through avoiding using fossil fuels adds up year on year, and partly because this sort of investment is desperately needed for this country to meet its 2035 and 2050 Net Zero goals. And finally, we're putting our resources into interesting projects like kelp farms, which capture carbon while benefiting ocean acidity and biodiversity.
The average person in the UK produces between 10 and 11.7 tonnes of CO2 a year.
With the blend of approaches above, each box of 36 toilet rolls will sequester over 1.2 tonnes of CO2.
So each delivery would sequester over 11% of your total carbon footprint for the year. The average Serious customer gets a box every 2.5 months.
So then our average subscriber would be offsetting over 50% of their annual carbon footprint just through simply their toilet roll choice.
Our product has an extremely low carbon footprint (0.56kgCO2e per roll) because it is UK made, in a factory using 100% renewable energy from recycled paper sourced in the UK. We also have an extensive tree planting programme that captures a lot of carbon and this will increase as these trees reach maturity.
Previously, we offset any emissions that we couldn’t eliminate to ensure our production and operations were carbon neutral, and we didn’t include our tree planting programme in our carbon neutral calculations. Recently, the laws for advertising green claims has changed so that those who offset their emissions are no longer able to claim carbon neutral. As a result, we’ve removed this from all our packaging and marketing claims. We support these changes and believe companies making green claims should be held to account to ensure transparency and reduce greenwashing.
The reality with Serious is that if we combine our minimal impact with our positive impact through tree planting, which you can see in more detail on our tree planting dashboard, our impact on the planet is a net positive, to use the language of the ex-Unilever CEO, Paul Polman’s recent book.
We are committed to doing all we can to further reduce all aspects of our footprint, including carbon, and maximising our forward impact on the planet.
You can find more information on our tree planting dashboard here. Our current tree planting partner globally is Veritree.
In the past Serious has partnered with different associations, helping run tree planting projects all around the world including Eden Reforestation Projects and The Tree Council. Our partners work with local communities, providing work for those who need it, often in areas affected by extreme poverty. We have planted trees in the UK, Nepal, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, Haiti & Central America.
With the help of our expert partners we plant native species, helping restore ecosystems and protecting them for the future. Our tree planting experts and the local communities work to look after the trees planted so they survive and continue to have a benefit for the global and local community now and in the future.
Trees capture carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away for as long as that tree is in the ground. Recent academic research has shown that a global tree planting programme has the potential to remove one quarter of all emissions created by human activities. (Science Magazine, 2019). Reforestation also helps in many other ways including restoration of ecosystems for wildlife, reducing erosion, capturing water in the soil to fight drought and desertification. It also has benefits in local communities by providing employment, keeping children in education longer, acting as a source of food and reducing climate migration because previously hard to inhabit areas become more stable.
Our loo roll is made of recycled paper without the use of any unnecessary chemicals (dyes, perfumes, etc.). Since it's made from recycled paper we do need to use a solution to decolourise the paper.
Serious Tissues are made from recycled paper, because of that we need to use some whitening agent to even out the colour of the paper used. We use hydrogen peroxide and not chlorine bleach.
After the production process, the water goes through a cleaning process and it's put back into the stream.
Serious Tissues are not white, they are a little off-white and the color may vary from one roll to another since they are made from recycled paper.
Our loo roll is vegan.
Each brand and product are different. In terms of product the easiest comparison is per sheet, Serious Tissues are made from a thick 2-ply and 250 sheets per roll. Most supermarket rolls are 2-ply and 150-200 sheets. Taking that into consideration Serious Tissues is better value as well as more environmentally friendly and plastic free.
Each Serious Tissues roll is made from 250 sheets of 2ply paper. Each sheet is 105 x 115mm. The average roll you buy in a supermarket has only 150-200 sheets so Serious Tissues represents better value.
You can find the full product specs for each product here.
We are always looking for new products and options to offer to the Serious Tissues family, sign up to our mailing list to stay updated on our latest product introductions.
They are made in Sweden.
Because the laundry strips product is 95% lighter than traditional laundry detergents and far smaller, it means the carbon footprint from shipping is lower than other bulkier products. We are looking to find a UK supplier soon, but we didn’t want to waste time getting the product to market so we could start making an impact by helping people reduce their plastic consumption and recovering plastic from nature.
It’s about as simple as laundry can be. A single strip with the perfect amount of detergent for a regular wash. You just put it in the
washing machine with the clothes and start the machine. This means there’s no mess or risk of spillage that you would have from a powder or liquid. The strip dissolves completely in the wash.
If the wash is more soiled than usual, put in two laundry strips rather than one. No fabric softener is required.
The strips are paraben free, phosphate free and
don’t include added bleach or dyes. They’re hypoallergenic and vegan. The product is also fully biodegradable.
All of the packaging is plastic free and 100% recyclable.
Yes.
The health of our oceans is vital to the health of our
planet. For the past 200 years, oceans have absorbed up to 40% of CO2 produced
by human activity but early signs are showing the rise of microplastics in our seas is disrupting their capacity to act as a natural carbon sink. Plastic is entering our seas at an alarming rate and if the current trend continues, they
could contain more plastic than fish by 2050.
That's why we're working to cut off the flow of plastic into the ocean.
For every pack of Serious Laundry we sell, we recover 1kg of ocean-bound plastic. That’s the equivalent of fifty 500ml plastic bottles or 500 crisp packets.
Ocean-bound plastic is defined as the collection of plastic waste in a 50km radius from the coastline (as defined in the Verra Plastic Standards) that would otherwise not have been collected and would most likely end up in the ocean. Essentially it is an intervention to divert this plastic safely away from oceans before it has a chance to leak into it.
Recovery is currently managed by our partner, Repurpose Global, and more information will be available soon on our Plastics page.
Yes, they are
vegan and cruelty free.
Yes, you can skip, pause or cancel at any time, before the subscription has renewed. Just log in to your account and click on the “more” button, there you’ll find the options.
This might be because when you first signed up you checked out as a guest. To access your account, you got an email with an activation link. If this is not valid you can also create an account here using the same email you checked out with. You can find a guide on how to manage your subscription here.
Yes, drop us a line and we can discuss the perfect products and prices to meet your needs.