The Cheeky Panda helping Protect the Rainforests

The Cheeky Panda? were the UK’s first 100% bamboo tissue brand, providing a sustainable alternative to tree-based tissue. The products are natural, luxuriously soft and friendly to sensitive skin, and are free from fertilisers, pesticides, chlorine bleach and fragrance. An award-winning company, The Cheeky Panda? wanted to give back and help protect the rainforests.

The Cheeky Panda? product line is made from 100% responsibly FSC audited bamboo forestry. Bamboo is the world’s fastest growing plant, growing up to 1 meter a day, and being a grass, bamboo does not require replanting after harvest. Not only is bamboo ultra sustainable, a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) by Carbon Footprint Ltd has shown that The Cheeky Panda? bamboo tissue products produce 65% less carbon than conventional tissue.

The pulp from regular tissue is being sourced from Scandinavia, Canada and South America. The cutting and transportation of tree pulp is only part of the process and a lot of the carbon is in the manufacturing conversion of tree pulp to finished products. So even recycled tissue and tissue products finished in the UK contain a carbon footprint. With that in mind The Cheeky Panda sought to work with the Wold Land Trust to create a totally Carbon Neutral Tissue.

Since April 2017, The Cheeky Panda? are offsetting through WLT’s Carbon Balanced programme the unavoidable emissions associated with every step of the production, manufacturing and distribution of their bamboo tissue. WLT use the funds to protect and restore Annamite Lowland Forest at Khe Nuoc Trong in Vietnam.

The rainforest is home to a number of highly endangered species of mammal, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Our sponsoring includes funding a team of rangers to carry out joint law enforcement activities with the local authorities that include patrolling, surveying hunting practices and illegal wildlife supply chains, monitoring and snare removal.

The project aims to elevate the level of protection for the forest to that of a Nature Reserve, to reduce pressures on the forest, preventing degradation and allowing degraded areas to return to being high quality forest again.

To date by consumers using The Cheeky Panda products we have balanced 3,700 tons of Carbon and saved over 29,600 trees. Our 2020 targets are to balance over 20,000 tons of carbon and save over 200,000 trees by using bamboo that would otherwise have been tree tissue products. You can read about the WLT’s project in more detail here. For further details contact [email protected]