What is toilet paper foam?

The short version

A bottle of toilet paper foam looks like a small hand soap pump. Instead of putting the foam on your hands, you fold a few sheets of loo paper, press the pump once onto the paper, and give it a couple of seconds to soak in. The paper goes from dry to lightly damp, and it holds together well enough to use.

The important part happens afterwards. A wet wipe is a separate sheet of fabric that has to go in the bin, and in practice a lot of them end up in the toilet. With foam, the only thing you flush is the toilet paper you were already flushing. The foam is a small amount of liquid soaked into it.

How toilet paper foam is used, step by step

Most foams follow the same routine. Foamie Gentle Toilet Paper Foam, for example, is used like this:

• Fold three or four sheets of your usual toilet paper into a pad.
• Press the pump once onto the centre of the folded paper.
• Wait about two seconds for the foam to absorb into the paper.
• Wipe as you would with a wet wipe. There is no rinsing.
• Drop the paper in the toilet and flush it like any other toilet paper.

Why people switch from wet wipes to foam

The main reason is what happens in the pipes. Toilet paper is made to fall apart in water quickly. Wipes are made to stay strong when wet, which is useful in your hand and a problem in a sewer. When Consumer NZ put 11 wipes sold as flushable through a test device, all of them stayed intact apart from the occasional small tear, while toilet paper started breaking down within minutes.

Water utilities say the same thing in plainer terms. Watercare in Auckland asks households to flush only the three Ps, pee, poo and toilet paper, and to put wet wipes in the rubbish bin because they don't break down and can block pipes. Water New Zealand has estimated that clearing blockages caused by wipes and other things that shouldn't be flushed costs utilities at least $16 million a year.

Foam gets around that problem without asking you to change your routine much. You keep the damp clean feeling, and the toilet only ever sees paper. There is more on this in our guide to flushable wipes in NZ.

What is in a toilet paper foam

Toilet paper foams are cosmetic cleansers, closer to a mild foaming face or hand wash than to anything medical. A typical formula is mostly water, with a gentle surfactant to make the foam, a humectant such as glycerine to keep the paper soft rather than soggy, a preservative system so the bottle stays good once opened, and either a fragrance or none.

As a worked example, the ingredient list for Foamie Gentle Toilet Paper Foam is Aqua, Lauryl Glucoside, Sodium Coco-Sulfate, Glycerine, Parfum, Panthenol, Citric Acid, Benzyl Alcohol and Dehydroacetic Acid. Lauryl Glucoside is a sugar-derived cleanser and Sodium Coco-Sulfate is coconut-derived. The formula is buffered to pH 5.0, is vegan and cruelty-free, and is scented with a mānuka, cedar and fig fragrance.

Whatever brand you look at, read the full ingredient list rather than the front of the bottle. If you react to fragrance, look for a fragrance-free option, and stop using any product that irritates.

How long a bottle lasts and what it costs per use

Because you only use one pump at a time, a small bottle goes a long way. A 60 ml bottle of Foamie with its foaming pump gives roughly 400 pumps. That is about 90 days for one adult, or around four to six weeks for a household sharing a bottle.

At NZ$19.95 for the bottle, 400 pumps works out to about 5 cents a use. You still use the toilet paper you would have used anyway, so the foam is the only extra cost. If you want to compare that with what wipes cost your household, our wet wipes cost per year guide does the maths in the open.

What toilet paper foam is not

It is not a medicine or a treatment, and it is not a replacement for washing your hands with soap and water after using the loo. It is for external use only and should be kept away from eyes and out of reach of children.

It is also not quite the same as a bidet, which washes with water rather than damp paper. Both keep wipes out of the pipes, and we compare them in bidet vs toilet paper foam. Foams also sit alongside toilet paper gels, which do a similar job with a thicker texture, covered in toilet paper gel vs foam.

Where to get it in New Zealand

Foamie Gentle Toilet Paper Foam is blended, filled and labelled in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and sent from Auckland by NZ Post, with free shipping across New Zealand on orders over $25. You can find it on the Foamie product page, which also has a sign-up to hear when stock is back if it has sold out.

Questions people ask