Bizcuits | Toilet Paper Day

Leanda Lee

I received an email to remind me that it was National Toilet Paper Day yesterday, in Australia. Apparently it comes to pass on 26 August in America. There is a day for everything: Yesterday was also Children’s Day in most of the countries that celebrate it (although everyday seems to be Children’s Day in my house); Malaysia has a National Rambutan Day (August 22); and based on algorithms used to calculate the various days celebrated and mentioned on the internet, whatnationaldayisit.com suggests that May 31 looks to become National Covfefe Day.

The National Toilet Paper Day information in my inbox, although not officially sanctioned and somewhat motivated by commercial considerations (albeit from a business with a heart), came from a company that I have been tailgating for a while.

After embarking on the Plastic Free July Challenge in 2016, I looked for innovative ways to stop dropping single-use plastic into landfill via that devil of the household rubbish bin. The next six months’ journey to source toilet paper without plastic wrapping lead me to this company and resulted in Christmas gifts to older Australian-based members of my family being boxes of 48 rolls of specially designed Christmas loo paper. It also had the effect of consolidating my looney reputation on the #PlasticFreeAnything front.

Who Gives a Crap – a great company name and one which does just that – donates 50% of their profits to help build toilets in developing countries. 2.4 billion people globally do not have access to basic sanitation – a toilet. Since being launched with crowd-funding in 2012, the company has donated the equivalent of MOP2.8 million to help fund hygiene and sanitation projects. They make their paper from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, bamboo and sugarcane.

This magnanimous little company is one of a growing global community of “B Corporations” who use business as a force for good. B Corps measure business performance by taking social and environmental impact into account thus fundamentally redefining business success. This is not just Corporate Social Responsibility or Eco-Friendly add-ons to existing business models, but a true integration of activities covering environmental and social governance, care for workers, support of the community and guardianship of the environment and resources.  B Corps compete not to be the best IN the world but to be the best FOR the world.

Together, these companies are an interdependent group of certified businesses that are part of the move to build a road to a new economy of positive impact on all stakeholders, including our environment and our future, but they are acting today. Many operate locally but some reach further afield using “the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems”.

These are the companies that will move us from our existing linear economy of consumption and waste production, leapfrogging the recycling phenomenon that simply leads to the same place via a longer route, to a truly circular economy of no waste of any resource.

It is precisely the old production and consumption patterns that created Macau’s smelliest street in Iao Hon (MDT’s Briefs June 1). Macau’s EPA states their principle to be “Living for today and planning for future”. We are certainly living for today, but as if there is no future. Preferably we could be living as if the future is today – turning planning into action now.

The profligate waste in our community is not just a government or community problem, and not independent of other jurisdictions or entities. Businesses, government and consumers all benefit from production and consumption and so we all have responsibility for the mess left behind.

The problem does not go away when the stuff is dumped. B Corps understand this and are leading us towards a better economic model.