Naked Paper (formerly Naked Sprout)

Q&A with Naked Paper

We sat down with Leila Francis Coleman, one of the co-founders of Naked Paper, to tell us more about the company and why they stand out in the ethical toilet paper market, and are one of Ethical Consumer's Best Buy Label holders.

Ethical Consumer: Tell us a bit about Naked Paper.

Naked Paper: We started Naked Paper in 2020 because we didn’t see why loo roll needed to be bleached white just for the sake of appearances. It turns out plenty of people agree! So far we’ve sold over 26 million bleach-free loo rolls to over 225,000 customers across the UK. We offer toilet paper, kitchen rolls, and boxes of tissues, as well as some commercial options like jumbo rolls, and you can get these made from bamboo or from recycled cardboard boxes.

Going without bleach means our products are brown and beige instead of white but the real difference is how they’re made, in a fossil fuel-free factory powered by over 8,000 solar panels, wind, and local biofuels. By stripping out the extra chemicals and the fossil fuels, we want to prove that everyday essentials can be made with much more care and much less impact.

Ethical Consumer:  Why do you think you received our Best Buy Label? What separates you from other ethical toilet paper brands?

NP: Most eco brands stop at the raw materials, so you’ll see lots of bamboo rolls or recycled rolls but not much in terms of sustainable change beyond this. We focus heavily on the manufacturing side; our tissue mill makes Naked Paper with 100% renewable energy and no fossil fuels. Everyone who makes our products is paid at least a real Living Wage.

We’re also big on transparency. We follow the Green Claims Code to the letter, meaning every claim we make, whether it’s about our solar panels or the plant based glue we use for our boxes, is backed up by evidence you can actually find on our website. Backing up your claims like this is actually a regulatory requirement in the UK now, but you’d be surprised how few companies actually do it. We don't want people to just take our word for it that we’re making products more ethically; we want to show our workings.

Ethical Consumer: Do you see a growing demand for ethical toilet paper?

NP: Definitely. People are starting to expect that "ethical" shouldn't be its own category, but the standard way of doing things. There’s a real appetite for transparent supply chains, less waste, and non-toxic ingredients. People want to know they’re not being greenwashed or manipulated, and that the products they’re bringing into their homes aren’t made with a load of unnecessary chemicals and packaging they’ll have to deal with.

We’ve grown because of this shift toward more thoughtful spending, but we’re hoping it pushes the big supermarket brands to do better too. At the end of the day, less wasteful manufacturing processes are usually going to be more efficient and more resilient in a business sense as well, so we’d love to see ethical manufacturing become the norm as consumer demand for accountability grows. 

Ethical Consumer: What does "ethical business" mean to you, and how do you integrate this philosophy into your company's day-to-day operations?

NP: For us, it’s about being open and honest. You can see that in our name and the colours on our packaging and website. We’re all used to seeing the colour green used everywhere as a bit of a marketing gimmick, but we’ve gone for a beige colour instead which echoes the unbleached brown of our rolls; what you see is what you get.

That down-to-earth approach runs through the whole team. Everyone knows the details of how Naked Paper is made and the thinking behind the decisions we’ve made. Because we’re all on the same page, anyone in the team can spot a way to make things a bit more efficient or suggest a positive change in their own part of the business. It’s very much an all-hands-on-deck situation and it makes the work feel much more meaningful.

Ethical Consumer: What is the most challenging aspect of running an ethical business, and how do you overcome those challenges?

NP: UK regulation is tightening up at the moment and the bar for making environmental claims is (rightly) getting very high. We don’t just want to clear that bar; we want to set a standard that other businesses can follow.

So a big challenge for us has been building our Green Credentials database, which you can find on our website. Going through every tiny detail and gathering independent proof so our customers can see exactly how we operate was a huge, painstaking job. But now it’s finished and updated regularly, it’s a brilliant resource for us as well as our customers. Having all of our evidence publicly organised and on hand helped us win the King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development in 2025, which was a lovely bit of recognition for all that behind-the-scenes hard work.

Ethical Consumer: How do you engage with your customers regarding ethical and sustainability issues?

NP: We’re open about how we make Naked Paper, and we really enjoy bringing our customers behind the scenes information on our production. In our regular newsletters and our blog we share photos from the factory, stories from the production line, and details about our fuel and logistics.

It’s great when people reply to our emails saying they had no idea loo roll could be so interesting! Hearing about our customers happily sharing the details of their funny beige rolls with friends and family gives us a real buzz. And this transparency creates a bit of a virtuous cycle; the more we share about how things are made, the more we find ways to improve, which gives us even more to talk about. 

Ethical Consumer: How do you measure the environmental impact of your operations, and what steps have you taken to reduce your carbon footprint?

NP: We track things in a few ways, including regular audits of the river water near our factory to make sure the water we borrow to hydrate our pulp goes back just as clean, and keeping track of our transport road miles so that we can find shorter routes. But the big focus is our overall CO2e footprint, which was independently calculated, and is re-calculated whenever we make significant changes. Our target is to reach net zero by 2040, and we don’t believe in offsetting so we’re doing this by real improvements to our processes.

For example, we’ve moved the majority of our transport onto electric rail instead of lorries, and we’ve set up deals with businesses around our factory so we can collect the cardboard packaging we use to make our recycled products locally in large loads to reduce transport emissions. In 2024, we even slimmed down our cardboard cores by a few millimetres while keeping the number of sheets of paper the same. A small tweak like this meant we could shrink our boxes, which meant more boxes on a pallet, and ultimately less road miles for the same amount of loo roll.

Ethical Consumer: Do you have any advice for consumers who want to make the switch to ethical toilet paper?

NP: Sustainable materials are important, but they don’t tell the whole story. For tissue, the type of fuel being used in the factory is key. To get from wet pulp to a dry sheet, you need furnaces running at up to 600°C. A lot of companies aren't open about what they burn to get that heat; in most cases it will be natural gas which is a fossil fuel, and some parts of the tissue industry are still reliant on coal.

Our advice would be to look for brands that can clearly explain their whole process, from pulp to paper, and ideally provide a climate footprint. Ours is printed on our boxes so you can’t miss it.

Ethical Consumer: Looking ahead, what future goals does your company have in place to further your ethical commitments?

NP: We know brown loo roll isn’t going to save the planet, but if we can make unbleached tissue the standard and bleached white rolls look odd, we’ll have done our job. We’re working hard to get Naked Paper into more cafes, hotels, and other public loos to help normalise the beige. We’re even in the Eden Project now!

We want to make it as easy as possible for people to switch at home, too. We offer a no-quibble money-back guarantee, so if you try any of our products and they’re just not for you, we’ll give you a full refund. We’re confident that once people try it and see the ethics behind it, they won't want to go back to the bleached stuff.

Find out more on the Naked Paper website.

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