WHEN it comes to having a sustainable lifestyle, nothing should be underestimated.

Our impact on the planet isn’t just the waste that we produce, the food that we eat and the clothes that we wear. Small changes can have a huge impact on the overall health of our environment – even the type of loo roll that you use.

You must be thinking: how glamorous are you, talking about toilet paper? Well, if you think about it, it is something we use every day and that is disposable, so it does matter what type of paper we flush down our toilets. And why should we be chopping down trees for the sake of personal hygiene? It seems a bit over the top, doesn’t it?

There are periodically reports in newspapers up and down the country about ‘posh fatbergs’. These are a congealed mass in a sewer system formed by the combination of non-biodegradable solid matter, such as wet wipes, and congealed grease or cooking fat. These have to be removed as they can become a real issue and block sewers for good.

In more affluent areas they tend to happen more often because people who live there generally use thicker loo paper, which takes longer to degrade – hence the posh fatberg!

I don’t think I need to lecture you about wet wipes, we all know that even those that are marked as ‘flushable’ can take years and years to degrade. There are brands out there that start to degrade after around 30 minutes – it’s about doing your research and knowing which ones are good and which aren’t.

I think that when you pick which toilet paper to buy, it’s just as important to make sure the product is eco-friendly. I used to buy rolls made out of 100 per cent recycled paper from my local supermarket. But it was still bothering me that they came wrapped in plastic and the quality of some brands wasn’t great.

I finally found a company called Who Gives A Crap that makes both 100 per cent recycled toilet paper and a premium version made out of bamboo from eco-friendly forests. You order it in bulk, it’s delivered to your door and it comes in a cardboard box. Each roll is wrapped in tissue paper to ensure it is clean and I reuse that paper for wrapping as it’s really colourful. I like buying from them also because 50 per cent of their profits go towards building toilets for those in need.

You can order a trial and all you get charged for is post and packaging. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there, but I think the colourful tissue paper is a bonus, as it’s great to wrap my home-made soaps!