The Good Roll sold 10% green bonds — the risks only lived in the prospectus

The Good Roll, the Dutch bamboo toilet-paper brand, advertised its €1 million bond issue in print: a fixed 10% annual return, entry from €100, and money going to a paper factory in Ghana with jobs and sanitation as the payoff. The only warning in the ad was a banner reading 'You are investing outside AFM supervision. No prospectus requirement for this activity.'

What the ad left out was the balance sheet: negative equity of €4.7 million, total debt of nearly €13 million and a €1.3 million loss in 2025 — disclosed only in the downloadable prospectus. The factory story was partial too: about 60% of the proceeds went to Ghana, while 40% was earmarked for European working capital, covering losses and paying interest on earlier bonds. The risks were not made explicit on the landing page the ad's QR code led to either.

On 11 March 2026 the Advertising Code Committee ruled the campaign misleading and unfair (case 2025/00670), breaching the Dutch Advertising Code's rules on essential information and the sustainability code's clarity requirement: the average consumer could not see the financial risks or that money would not go solely to the factory. The committee accepted that print space is limited — and said the risks belonged on the landing page regardless. The Good Roll did not appeal.