We make toilet paper from virgin wood pulp. Bamboo is, on most environmental measures, the better material. It would be easier not to write this piece.
But it's the question people ask, and a brand that dodges it isn't worth reading. So here is the honest comparison, including the parts that don't favour us.
Where bamboo genuinely wins
It isn't close, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
It grows back faster. Bamboo is a grass. Some species reach harvest maturity in three to five years against decades for hardwood, and cutting it doesn't kill the plant — it regrows from the same root system.
It needs less input. Bamboo generally requires less water than hardwood pulp and typically grows without pesticides or fertiliser.
The deforestation argument is real. Tissue production accounts for a meaningful share of global forest loss. That is a genuine cost of virgin pulp, and it belongs on the ledger.
If your primary criterion is environmental impact, bamboo is the better answer. We're not going to construct an argument against that.
Where the picture gets more complicated
Two things are worth knowing before treating the choice as settled.
Most bamboo pulp is processed and shipped a long way. The material grows overwhelmingly in China, so a bamboo roll sold in Dubai has usually travelled further than a European or regionally converted one. Freight doesn't cancel the growing advantage, but it's part of the calculation and it's rarely mentioned.
Not all virgin pulp is equal. Pulp from certified managed plantations is a different proposition from uncertified supply. FSC certification is the thing to look for, and it's worth asking about regardless of which material you choose.
Where virgin pulp performs better
This is the part we'd argue, and it's specific rather than general.
Bamboo fibres are typically shorter than the softwood fibres used for tissue strength. Fibre length is one of the primary drivers of wet strength — how much of its integrity a sheet keeps once saturated.
In a market where paper is used dry, this barely registers. In a UAE bathroom it matters a great deal, because almost every bathroom here has a shattaf, which means the paper's actual job is drying rather than wiping. It is doing its work wet, every time. The full explanation is in choosing toilet paper when you use a shattaf.
Bamboo tissue can be engineered to perform well here — the material isn't the whole story, and manufacturing quality matters as much as furnish. But it's working against its fibre length rather than with it, and a lot of bamboo tissue sold on environmental credentials hasn't been optimised for this at all.
The softness question
Bamboo is frequently marketed as softer. In our experience the difference is smaller than the claims suggest, and it varies more between manufacturers than between materials.
Softness is also, in this market, close to the wrong criterion. It describes a dry sheet. Most of the time here, the sheet isn't dry.
How to decide
Choose bamboo if environmental impact is your leading consideration, or you're primarily a paper user rather than a shattaf user. It's a defensible choice and there are good bamboo products available in the UAE.
Choose virgin pulp if wet performance is your leading consideration, particularly in a shattaf household, and you'd rather the material was chosen for the job than for the story.
Either way, check the certification, whether it's unscented, and how it disperses — which matters more here than most places, as set out in can you flush toilet paper in Dubai?
What we chose and why
We use virgin pulp because wet strength is the property this market actually needs, and we weren't willing to compromise it. That's a real trade-off rather than a free win, and we'd rather say so than dress it up.
It's also not a permanent position. If bamboo furnish reaches comparable wet performance, the argument changes and so will we.
Fragile Toilet Tissue — three-ply, unscented, virgin pulp. Further reading: luxury toilet paper in the UAE · 2-ply vs 3-ply vs 4-ply