[Interview] How The Good Roll makes toilet paper ‘eco-sexy’

The Good Roll gives a very mundane product an innovative twist. With toilet paper made from bamboo, and with its social impact, the Dutch start-up makes toilet paper “eco-sexy”.

Loving toilet paper

All marketing books and courses would describe toilet paper as the textbook example of a product with low engagement and low interest, so it is seemingly hopeless to build a ‘love brand’ around. Yet at the time of our interview, The Good Roll is delivering its first shipment of ecological toilet paper to the Netherlands’ biggest supermarket chain, Albert Heijn: a big next step for the ambitious start-up.

At the RetailDetail Congress, on 25 April, founder Melle Schellekens will explain how The Good Roll aims to transform the toilet paper industry, a sector that turns out to be one of the most polluting in the world – even more so than aviation. “More than 270,000 trees are cut down every day, mostly in third-world countries. Planting a new one for every tree felled is also nonsense, because all the stored CO2 goes back into the ozone when felling and it takes years for such a tree to grow.”

With a background in sustainability consulting within the hospitality industry, Schellekens founded The Good Roll to provide a sustainable alternative that requires no tree felling – while improving sanitation in developing countries. “You really can save lives with a clean toilet. Worldwide, only one in three have access to a toilet, while we have an average of two here. Our goal is to build 100,000 toilets in Ghana, not through foundations but in direct collaboration with local people. In fact, since we have been doing this in schools, attendance rates there are rising.”

The new entrepreneurship

Yet Schellekens wants to be anything but preachy. “You can call that ‘social profit’, I just call it ‘common sense’. We think this can – and should – be the new form of entrepreneurship. I regularly speak to business leaders, and regardless of whether companies are small or large: everyone can very easily do things differently. The new entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship that makes us all a little bit better.”

The Good Roll has applied innovation not only to the product itself, but also to the way it is distributed. Today, 60 % of sales are direct to consumers, 40 % to businesses. The company has its own subscription model, through which customers get toilet paper delivered directly to their homes. “Condoms, toilet paper and tampons are the top three products consumers are a bit embarrassed about in the supermarket. Moreover, having to navigate through a supermarket with huge packs of toilet paper is quite inconvenient – as well as unsustainable.”

The “toilet’s Tony’s Chocolonely”

Above all, The Good Roll wants to make toilet paper sexy. The young brand has already won several marketing and design awards, partly because of the attractive wrappers around the paper (in collaboration with Ghanaian artists, for example) and the sometimes bold campaigns. “We like to look for the edge. In the Netherlands, they sometimes call us the Tony’s Chocolonely of toilet paper. My personal mission is to show that everyday products can indeed have a positive impact on your – and other people’s – lives.”

The ambition? To become world-famous in the Netherlands and Belgium, the entrepreneur laughs. “Our ambition is to become the sustainable expert of the loo. In the coming months, we will launch more sustainable variants on a number of products people use on the toilet, from the toilet brush to the soap. But more broadly, we want to start a whole movement.”

At the 2024 RetailDetail Congress, in addition to eco-sexy toilet paper, you can expect to hear keynotes from Average Rob, Jysk, Gino Van Ossel, Thrive Beer, Jorg Snoeck and many more!