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Image credits: The Good Roll

The Good Roll, a social enterprise company manufacturing 100 per cent recycled toilet paper, announced that it has raised €779,556 in crowdfunding on the CrowdAboutNow platform. 

The Good Roll launched this crowdfunding campaign with a target of €1M..

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The Good Roll says it will use the funds to accelerate marketing efforts and expand its team with several important roles. 

How was The Good Roll born?

Several companies are working to make the world a better place. Among them is  The Good Roll. 

The Dutch startup  originated from a collective frustration. 

According to the company, there are 2.4B people worldwide who do not have access to safe and clean toilets, one-third of the world’s population. 

In addition, 270,000 trees are cut down daily to produce toilet paper. The company was established to tackle both problems. 

The Good Roll: What you need to know

Sander de Klerk and Melle Schellekens founded The Good Roll in 2017 to disrupt the toilet paper market by manufacturing toilet paper from an alternative raw material instead of wood pulp – Bamboo. 

“Bamboo – at least the right kind – turns out to be a fantastic raw material for making super strong and soft toilet paper,” says the company. 

The company built its first factory in Ghana last year with the cooperation of national and local governments (and with the support of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and Rabobank Foundation). 

The factory manufactures toilet paper from bamboo, simultaneously giving employment to locals. 

The Good Roll says it carefully selects small farmers who have bamboo on their land and trains them on how to handle their land and bamboo carefully and wisely. The company’s local teams then cut and harvest the bamboo so that it grows back to a level where it can be cut again within 12-24 months without damage.

The Good Roll claims it deals with the farmers directly in a certified fair trade manner and pays them a premium on top of the reference price set by the Ministry of Agriculture.

“We ensure that our farmers do not cultivate more than 20 per cent of their land with bamboo. Instead, we provide them with seedlings from our local nursery if they have less. They can then grow additional bamboo. For example, we now give approximately 800 farmers an average of six months of extra income each year. In addition, we already provide direct employment to approximately 70 people in our factory and the field.”

The company allocates 50 per cent of profits to The Good Roll Foundation. The Foundation works with local people in Ghana to build safe, sanitary facilities in schools and villages, and maintains them. The company claims to have built 213 toilets in Ghana and Uganda.

The company claims it doubled its annual turnover until last year by almost €2.5M. 

“This year, we will double to approximately €5M. We want to maintain or even accelerate this growth rate for 6-7 years. The fast calculator understands that we aim to achieve at least €300M in turnover by 2028,” adds the company.