Flush with cash

Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban saves the planet one TP roll at a time

Mark Cuban, Nowitzki celebrity heroes baseball game

Mark Cuban's latest investment is a hit with celebrities.

Photo by Brandon Colston Photography

Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban's newest investment is toilet paper that saves trees. Cuban has invested an undisclosed sum of money in Cloud Paper Inc., a Seattle-based startup founded in 2019 that produces tree-free, three-ply toilet paper.

It's ordered online and shipped to your home in plastic-free packaging and via carbon-neutral delivery.

“I think it’s a great product on the right mission!” Cuban says by email.

Aside from Cuban, big-name Cloud Paper investors announced September 22 include Ashton Kutcher, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, and Wilson’s wife, singer-songwriter Ciara. These folks and others contributed to a $3 million funding round led by venture capital firm Greycroft.

Americans reportedly will use more than 100 trees' worth of disposable paper products, including toilet paper, throughout their lives.

“Cloud Paper can help save a billion trees in the years ahead, and it’s incredibly validating to have investors and advocates join us in that mission,” co-founder Austin Watkins says in a release.

For years, Cuban — often touted as a future presidential candidate — has been promoting the fight against climate change. Last year, for instance, Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks teamed up with the Carbonfund.org Foundation in an effort to offset the NBA squad’s carbon emissions from corporate travel. Two years earlier, Cuban declared that “any reasonable person” should want to combat threats to the climate.

But it appears Cuban hasn’t, until now, championed bamboo toilet paper as a solution to climate change.

“We know that deforestation is a leading cause of climate change. We’re giving every person an opportunity to be a part of the solution by preserving forests every single day,” Cloud Paper co-founder Ryan Fritsch says. “We are resetting the status quo by moving away from tree-based paper and using ultra-sustainable, renewable resources like bamboo instead.”

But, has Cuban's 16-bathroom mansion in Preston Hollow switched to Cloud Paper? He says he’s waiting for his order to arrive.

Cloud Paper isn't the only TP maker trying to help better the planet. Irving-based Kimberly-Clark Corp., one of the world’s biggest makers of toilet paper, rolled out a line of towel and tissue products that incorporate plant-based fibers like bamboo and wheat straw five years ago. In June, the Fortune 500 company committed to a 50 percent reduction of its carbon footprint for Cottonelle, Scott, and other brands by 2030 compared with 2015.

“Setting and achieving aggressive climate goals has been part of Kimberly-Clark’s sustainability journey for 25 years,” Lisa Morden, the company’s vice president of safety, sustainability, and occupational health, says in a release.

celebrities sustainability

Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

job market texas wallethub jobs

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report