PKN sat down with Dr Elissa Foster, head of Sustainability at purpose-led toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap, to find out more about the strategy behind the company’s packaging choices.
Toilet-paper brand Who Gives A Crap, founded in Melbourne in 2012 by Simon Griffiths, Danny Alexander and Jehan Ratnatunga, operates hubs in Melbourne, Los Angeles, London and the Philippines. The company distributes FSC-certified recycled or bamboo-based household essentials including toilet paper, tissues and paper towels and donates 50 per cent of profits to help provide everyone in the world with access to clean water and a toilet.
Speaking on the PKN Podcast*, Dr Elissa Foster explains her role involves developing “an actionable plan that identifies our sustainability priorities and our approach to improving the sustainability of our products and all of our business operations.”
Foster, who holds a doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering and a master’s degree in Environmental Science, says the company’s sustainability strategy focuses on four environmental impact areas: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, keeping forests intact, choosing better materials, and protecting water.
“Our packaging is designed with end-of-life in mind,” she says. “It’s going to be discarded quickly, so it’s important to think about what kind of materials you’re using and what can happen to it at the end of its useful life.”
Who Gives A Crap’s primary and secondary packaging is paper-based, made from recycled fibres or bamboo. The company avoids using film plastic packaging on their products, which Foster says are “pretty notorious for being hard to recycle” and “can really be a contaminant in recycling systems.”
Design and trade-offs
Foster says packaging design must balance “the functionality of the package” with its recyclability. “You don’t want to ruin a great recyclable material by adding the wrong inks or a label that will contaminate the recycling stream,” she says.
Consumer engagement
Known for its eye-catching packaging with strong messaging, the company has also made clear disposal instructions a focus. “What we really want to do for our customers is give them packaging materials that they can easily put in their kerbside bin, so they know it’s going to be recycled and not end up in a landfill,” Foster says.
Who Gives A Crap are members of packaging coalitions in each market, including the Australian Packaging Covenant Organization(APCO) locally, and OPRL in the UK. Foster says these organisations help provide “clear and simple instructions that improve the likelihood that the customer is going to recycle the packaging properly.”
Foster adds that more than half of customers now consider sustainability a key purchasing factor, citing a McKinsey & Company report. “It’s not a passing trend,” she said. “There is growing consumer expectation that brand owners will deliver responsible packaging.”
As an APCO member of three years’ standing, the company applies the organisation’s Sustainable Packaging Guidelines and PREP (Packaging Recyclability Evaluation Portal) tool to inform its packaging choices.
“You can plug in the details of the packaging you’re designing to see what kind of label you should use under the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) system,” Foster said. “It’s a great tool to fast-forward your learning and make sure what you’ve designed can be recycled.”
Barriers and regulation
Asked about barriers to adopting more sustainable packaging, she says these include cost, infrastructure gaps, material availability, and performance requirements for some products.
Foster makes a call for more mono-material packaging: “When we start to laminate things together and layer different types of plastics on metals on paper, those things are very hard to separate and most often end up in the landfill.”
She said regulation is creating positive pressure. “Australia’s National Packaging Targets made it very clear, 100 per cent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging; 70 per cent of plastic packaging recycled or composted; 50 per cent recycled content; and phase-out of problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics,” Foster says. “It’s very straightforward. Businesses can work towards those goals.”
She adds that extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes in the UK, Europe and US states are also influencing design decisions. “The regulations are incentivising recyclable packaging and penalising the hard-to-recycle packaging materials,” Foster says.
Transparency and trust
Foster says transparency is a big priority for Who Gives a Crap, and the company prepares for and commits to ongoing dialogue with customers. She points to the launch of its recently launched line extension, the pet waste and garbage bag ranges, where compostable materials were chosen only for compost caddy liners, while landfill-bound bags were made from recycled plastic, which remains inert in landfill and gives value to recycled plastics.
The company’s mission is to donate 50 per cent of profits towards clean water and sanitation efforts. “We have really been doubling down on trying to make sure that message is consistently shared,” Foster said. To date, $18 million has been raised.
Looking ahead, Foster is optimistic, “I do think people want the situation to improve, so hopefully collectively, we are moving in a better direction and maybe even faster than it was in the last five years.”
For other brands starting out on their responsible packaging journey, Foster advises focusing on three actions: “Reduce packaging and minimise material use; design for recyclability; and maximise post-consumer recycled content.
You can listen to the PKN Podcast interview with Dr Elissa Foster (Episode 112) on your favourite podcast platform, or find it on the PKN website in the podcast section.
This article was first published in the September-October 2025 print issue of PKN Packaging News, p14.
