The Top Line:

MAYBE buy. We liked using Tushy bamboo toilet paper — and we love bamboo toilet paper in general, since it uses less than gallon to produce versus 37 gallons of traditional toilet paper. We also really liked that Tushy’s TP was unbleached. Big pro that the paper was decently soft and definitely strong. The wrapping adds a nice touch to the bathroom as well. We think it’s a reasonable option if you want an unbleached (yay), sustainable bamboo toilet paper and are willing to shell out a few extra bucks.

The Breakdown:

• Cost & Products: $69 for a one time purchase of 36 Rolls; Subscriptions are $59 (Delivery every 1, 2, 3, or 4 months)

• How ‘Clean’ Is This? Pretty clean! Tushy uses less than 1 gallon of water to create bamboo TP, while conventional TP takes up to 37 gallons for a roll. Also, Tushy doesn’t bleach their toilet paper.

• Packaging: Carboard box - each roll is individually wrapped. ̶W̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶r̶a̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶y̶c̶l̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶o̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶a̶x̶y̶.̶ ̶W̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶. Update: The core and the wrapping are recyclable!

• Purchasing & Shipping: Super easy. We just bought ours on the Tushy website.

• Good to know: The company website has the word “hello” in it. The other website is NSFW!

• What’s Your Impact? Significantly reduce the amount of water needed to produce rolls of toilet paper. Bamboo grows much faster than trees (requiring less water) and other resources to grow before harvesting for production of toilet paper, thus making it more sustainable than the tree-based toilet paper.

• Side Note: Bamboo can grow 3ft in just 24 hours; it can be harvested once a year and doesn’t need to be replanted. It also uses 30% less water than hardwood trees, gives out 35% more oxygen than trees — an acre of bamboo can fix approximately 25 metric tons of atmospheric CO2 per year.

The Good:

✔ Unbleached bamboo paper! Yes!

✔ Big rolls, with strong, soft (for bamboo) toilet paper

✔ Pretty wrapping on the rolls

✔ Narrow core (more TP!)

The Bad:

✗ On the pricy side of bamboo TP 😞

✗ Unsure on ability to recycle the wrapping

The Experience

Context: We have used Scott, Seventh Generation, Cottonelle, Charmin and just about every drugstore brand that exists. Seventh Generation was our recent staple until our voyage into bamboo and recycled paper during quarantine. We have tried our fair share of bamboo and recycled paper, including wrapped batch: Who Gives a Crap (bamboo), bippy, Reel, Mother Earth, and Thrive Market. Check out the latest roundup of sustainable bamboo toilet paper here. Here is our experience with Tushy’s bamboo toilet paper:

• Soft enough, note: not as plush as Cottonelle.

• On the soft end of bamboo toilet paper that we’ve tried.

• Definitely not like gas station TP - has some structure to it, so no worries of shredding

• We like that it’s unbleached, a lot!

• Like that the core is super thin/narrow too.

• We (personally) love the aesthetic of the wrapper on the toilet paper.

The Cost

One source suggests that the average person uses 100 rolls of toilet paper per year, so we are going to use that for cost comparison. We’ll compare mostly online brands which we’ve reviewed the past (and recently done a big bamboo toilet paper roundup of the best!), including Elvissmart, Go No. 2, Who Gives a Crap (recycled), PlantPaper, Better Way and Brandless. We compared Tushy to one drugstore brand, Quilted Northern.

Money Report: Oof. Tushy bamboo toilet paper is one of the pricier options. There are other cheaper options out there, sadly, like PlantPaper.

Our Recommendation:

MAYBE buy. We liked using Tushy bamboo toilet paper — and we love bamboo toilet paper in general, since it uses less than gallon to produce versus 37 gallons of traditional toilet paper. We also really liked that Tushy’s TP was unbleached. Big pro that the paper was reasonably soft and definitely strong. The wrapping adds a nice touch to the bathroom as well. We think it’s a reasonable option if you want an unbleached (yay), sustainable bamboo toilet paper and are willing to shell out a few extra bucks.

We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!