Flush: the toilet paper that let you pick which old-growth forest to cut

For eight days in April 2021, a new toilet paper brand called Flush promised shoppers something no roll had offered before: the chance to choose which old-growth forest got cut down to make it. People were furious. On Earth Day, Cloud Paper, a Seattle startup that makes tree-free toilet paper from bamboo, revealed that Flush was its own invention, and that the forests on the map were real.¹

We made Flush with Cloud Paper: the brand, the film, the website, the forest map and the social feed. Cloud Paper ran the launch from its channels.

Big toilet paper brands wipe with ancient forests

The problem Cloud Paper wanted to fix is hidden in plain sight, on a holder next to every toilet. The softest tree-based toilet paper needs the most virgin wood. That wood comes from old-growth forests, including North America’s Boreal, which are logged, pulped, used once and flushed.

Bamboo is a grass. It grows back fast, and Cloud Paper turns it into three-ply rolls delivered to your door. The company had serious backing: Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition had invested in its 2020 round.² What it needed in the spring of 2021 was for people to look at the roll in their hand and ask where it came from.

Most people never do. Ads about deforestation get scrolled past. So we didn’t make an ad about deforestation. We made a brand that sold it.

A brand built on Flushparency

Flush was “the first TP that lets you choose your forest.” Its promise was total transparency, which it called Flushparency: tree to table, cradle to throne. If you know which farm your oat milk comes from, the thinking went, you should know which forest you wipe with.

The website put real forests on a map: the Pacific Northwest, the Arctic Boreal, Alabama and the Amazon. Each roll was named for its source. Boreally Plush came from the Boreal. Northwestern Lushberjack came from the Pacific Northwest. Tide Roll came from Alabama, and Amazohhhn promised the “best bang for your buck and backside.” California Shredwoods was listed as coming soon.

There was a launch film starring a very confident CEO, a blog called The Lush, social accounts and a Kickstarter-style pre-order page. All of it looked like a real startup, because a believable brand was the only way the joke would work. The pitch deck put it plainly: after the world hates it, reveal the real message on Earth Day.

The internet hated it, right on schedule

Flush launched on April 13. Within days the comments were filling up. People called it the dumbest idea they’d ever seen, asked who would cut down an ancient tree to wipe, and told the brand to use bamboo or hemp instead. Seattle’s KING 5 reported a confused and angry public, with plenty of disbelief on social media.¹

Even Cloud Paper’s own investors played along. Robert Downey Jr. called Flush “worst in class.”

Every angry comment was the campaign working. People who had never once thought about where toilet paper comes from were now arguing about old-growth forests in a stranger’s comment section, and telling a brand to go tree-free.

Then the site flipped

On April 21, the eve of Earth Day, the Flush website changed. The forest map was gone. In its place, over a field of stumps: “We made a fake TP company. Flush is fake. But the problem is shockingly real.” The line underneath did the rest: you literally choose which old-growth forest to flush when you choose a big toilet paper brand.

Flush was fake. The forests on the map were real.

The shop button now read “Shop fake products,” and every visitor who came to be outraged was pointed to Cloud Paper’s bamboo rolls. A reveal film showed bamboo as the answer, and the Flush feed switched from satire to straight talk: hard truths about old-growth logging, and things people could actually do.

The comments turned. “Genius.” “Masterfully executed.” “You got me good.” One commenter from Alabama said it made her heart happy. Another investor, Ashton Kutcher, called it “brilliant.”

The people who had been angriest were now the ones telling their friends they’d been had, and why it mattered.

What came next for Cloud Paper

KING 5 told its Seattle viewers that the stunt was meant to highlight a very real problem, and that Cloud Paper cared more about awareness of deforestation than about selling more rolls.¹

A year later, MediaPost looked back on the “choose a forest for your bum” campaign as Cloud Paper launched its next Earth Month push, Free the Trees, with a goal of saving 22,000 trees in 2022.³ By then Cloud Paper’s rolls had saved more than 10,000 trees in 2021, and the company had raised $5 million in a round that brought in Bezos Expeditions, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures and Ashton Kutcher’s SOUNDWaves.⁴

Flush lived for eight days. The question it asked has a longer life: the next time you buy toilet paper, which forest are you choosing?