Update: The public comment period closed on April 28, 2025. Please see the Projects page for more information.
Sanitary paper products, including toilet paper, towels, and facial tissue, are daily essentials. The U.S. consumes approximately 19.2 billion pounds of them annually – roughly 56 pounds per person. But as single-use products made from virgin tree fiber, they can carry a hefty environmental footprint.
That’s why we’re proposing a leadership standard for sanitary paper products that contain no virgin tree fiber and meet meaningful manufacturing and packaging sustainability requirements.
Green Seal has long recognized manufacturing leaders that use 100% recycled fiber. Now, we’re adding a certification pathway for tree-free products like those made from bamboo. This will expand opportunities for brands that produce responsibly sourced alternative-fiber sanitary paper to verify their sustainability leadership and give consumers more certified choices in this product category.
A High-Impact Product Category
The fiber composition of sanitary paper products has a significant impact on their overall environmental footprint.
Making these products with virgin tree fiber heavily contributes to deforestation, denuding 28 million acres of the ecologically valuable Boreal forest in a 20-year period – an area roughly the size of Ohio.
Converting virgin wood into pulp is an extremely energy-intensive process. Papermaking is the third-largest energy consuming manufacturing sector, after chemicals and petroleum and coal products. In fact, products made from virgin tree fiber can generate three times as many CO2 emissions as products made from other types of pulp. Making paper from virgin tree fiber also guzzles massive amounts of water, demanding more than 24 billion gallons a day.
Reducing the Impacts of an Everyday Product
Using recycled or alternative fiber significantly reduces the carbon and water impacts of producing sanitary paper products and eliminates their impact on deforestation.
By meeting stringent fiber sourcing and manufacturing criteria, Green Seal-certified sanitary paper products save an average of 30.5 billion gallons of water and 11.7 million metric tons of CO2 emissions a year – the equivalent of taking 2.8 million cars off the road.
Under our new standard, Green Seal will:
- Verify products use no virgin tree fiber
- Validate significant savings in carbon pollution and water use
- Confirm a product is made without fragrances, PFAS, or any other harmful chemicals
Buyers trust Green Seal-certified sanitary paper products because they significantly reduce carbon emissions, protect ancient and endangered forests, and preserve water resources. Our new standard maintains this leadership bar while growing market impact by inviting a broader group of manufacturers to verify their sustainability achievement.
Lend us your voice
We believe a collaborative approach leads to better outcomes for everyone. We developed our draft standard in collaboration with the leading towel and tissue brands, purchasers and policy advocates in our Working Group to promote industry alignment on meaningful claims and criteria for this product category.
We want to hear from you too. We are accepting public comment on our proposed criteria for sanitary paper products through April 28, 2025.
Learn more and submit your comment here.