Serious Tissues partners with Mitie to plant 100,000 trees and transform lives through switching toilet paper
Serious Tissues, the certified social enterprise, has announced a three-year partnership with Mitie, a UK leading facilities management company, and Bunzl Cleaning and Hygiene Supplies (BCHS). Under the partnership, Mitie will adopt Serious Tissues as a key supplier of commodity toilet paper across its portfolio, delivering a remarkable social and environmental impact simply by changing the toilet paper used across Mitie sites.
An Industry First: Bringing the Change Please Model Into Cleaning
This partnership represents a genuinely pioneering moment for the facilities management sector. For the first time, the proven methodology behind Change Please; the celebrated social enterprise that has spent a decade training people experiencing homelessness as baristas, in partnership with some of the world’s biggest companies, is being brought into the cleaning industry.
Working through Serious Tissues’ network of trusted homelessness partner organisations, including St Mungo’s, Crisis, Single Homeless Project and Winter Comfort, individuals experiencing homelessness will be carefully selected, trained as cleaning operatives, and supported into roles across Mitie’s customer sites, via the Mitie Foundation.
The programme is built around a “jobs first” philosophy; the belief that employment, not housing alone, is the most powerful route out of homelessness. Participants will receive the Real Living Wage throughout their training, support securing housing and a bank account, access to therapy and ongoing mental health support, and at least six months of continued aftercare as they transition into sustained employment.
Training will be delivered to leading industry standards through Bunzl Cleaning and Hygiene Supplies’ Advantage Learn platform; a specialist cleaning and hygiene online training programme comprising 26 modules, covering all aspects of the journey into professional cleaning.
The partnership aims to induct an initial cohort of four in its first year, with ambition to scale over the three-year term. The programme will support candidates out of homelessness and into meaningful employment, with each trainee supported by therapy, training and wraparound support.
A Sector Full of Opportunity
The cleaning and hygiene industry is one of the UK’s largest employment sectors, with an estimated 225,000 roles available at any one time (Cleaning Matters, January 2025), representing a significant and growing opportunity for people looking to build a career. At the same time, 354,000 people in England are affected by homelessness (Shelter England, December 2024). This partnership represents a genuine opportunity to connect those seeking stable employment with a sector that can offer it, demonstrating that everyday procurement decisions can be a force for lasting social change.
Turning Everyday Spending Into Extraordinary Impact
From 1 April 2026, every roll of toilet paper Mitie procures, Serious Tissues will plant one tree, generating measurable, trackable change. Over the course of the three-year partnership, Mitie expects to plant over 30,000 trees per year, totalling over 100,000 trees planted through the life of the contract, sequestering an estimated 134,970 tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime and restoring 54.3 hectares of deforested land.
Progress will be tracked through a bespoke tree planting dashboard, giving Mitie and its customers real-time visibility of where trees are being planted, the species involved, and the carbon being captured across their lifetime, verified using blockchain technology to ensure complete transparency and no double counting.
Serious Tissues products are made from post-consumer recycled paper, manufactured in the UK with no chlorine or harmful chemicals.
Aligned with Mitie’s Plan Thrive and Plan Zero
This partnership aligns closely with Mitie’s Plan Thrive commitments: creating lasting and meaningful social value, building pathways for sustainable futures, strengthening communities, and leaving a positive legacy for the people and places Mitie serves. It equally supports Mitie’s Plan Zero ambitions, delivering nature-based climate action, Nature Positive outcomes and circular economy principles through business-as- usual service delivery.
Chris Baker, Founder and CEO, Serious Tissues, said: “We have spent ten years watching the Change Please model transform lives through coffee, and the results have been extraordinary. Now, for the first time, we are bringing that same framework into the cleaning sector, and we could not be more excited to be doing it with Mitie and Bunzl Cleaning and Hygiene Supplies.
“Mitie is exactly the kind of partner that makes this possible at scale. The cleaning industry offers hundreds of thousands of roles and a genuine desire to do things differently. We believe this partnership proves that something as simple as the toilet paper you buy can change lives, restore ecosystems and help businesses meet their social and environmental commitments, all at the same time. This is just the beginning.”
Helen Longfils, Group Director of Social Value, Mitie, said: “Through our partnership with Serious Tissues, we’re helping turn everyday services into lasting opportunities for people. By creating long-term pathways into employment, this programme supports people out of homelessness while delivering impactful social value for communities and customers.”