Toilet paper: Small luxury, big cost
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Toilet paper
American consumer habits are often a matter of debate, especially in the era of climate change, and a big habit to watch involves an everyday unmentionable.
Mass-market toilet paper is a surprisingly recent US invention, and the country uses more of it per capita than any other. While emerging markets like China and India, which are adding bathrooms as they add a middle class, have driven industry growth, American tastes are increasingly resource-intensive. US demand for “luxury” TP—the fluffy two-ply stuff—grew 70% in the first half of this decade. (Consumers “may not be able to take a spa vacation,” a paper-company spokeswoman told the Washington Post. “But they can make their home a little bit more spa-like.”)
The consequence of this seemingly small indulgence is large: “a dramatic and irreversible toll” on forests, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Here’s some bathroom reading for you.
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Reuters/Andrea Hopkins
BY THE DIGITS
4%: Share of world population Americans represent
20%: Share of world’s toilet paper Americans consume
100 lbs (45 kg): Toilet paper used annually by the average four-person household in the US
384: Trees used over the lifetime of the average American in the form of toilet paper
$400 million: Annual sales of toilet paper at Costco
#1: Rank of toilet paper among Costco’s best-selling products
20%–25%: Recent annual growth in the Indian toilet paper market
37: Number of requests for an Obsession on toilet paper we’ve fielded from readers to date
62%: Share of those that came from one passionate reader named Russell 👋
REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
Seeing the forest through the TP
Back in 2009, a senior NRDC scientist told The Guardian that making toilet paper from virgin wood pulp was “a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.”
That’s in part because toilet paper uses a lot of trees; in 2010, the NRDC estimated that if every American household replaced just one virgin-pulp toilet paper roll with a recycled-paper roll, it would save over 400,000 trees. Virgin pulp has longer fibers, which makes it softer, and “Americans tend to be more concerned than the rest of the world about ideal toilet paper texture in their homes.” But it also requires a lot more carbon emissions to produce.
The refusal of major brands like Procter & Gamble, which produces Charmin, to switch from virgin pulp to sustainable materials is devastating forests, according to the report produced by the NRDC and Stand.earth.
According to the NRDC, more than 28 million acres—an area the size of Ohio—of the Canadian boreal forest were logged in the last two decades. Virgin pulp accounts for 23% of Canada’s forest product exports. Not only does logging itself emit carbon, the forest stores immense quantities of carbon in its soil, making it key to protecting against climate change.
BRIEF HISTORY
1391: The emperor of China orders 720,000 two-foot by three-foot sheets from the Bureau of Imperial Supplies: The first recorded use of toilet paper.
1596: Sir John Harington, godson of Elizabeth I and ancestor of Game of Thrones star Kit Harington, invents the first flush toilet.
1710: The inventor of the bidet, Christophe des Rosiers, installs one in the bedroom of the French royal family.
1775: Scottish watchmaker Alexander Cummings patents the flush toilet, which includes an S-shaped pipe to trap odors.
1844: Friedrich Gottlob Keller pioneers the industrial manufacture of paper from wood pulp.
1851: The first public toilets are built in London.
1857: American inventor Joseph Gayetty produces “therapeutic bathroom paper,” aloe-soaked hemp—the first commercial toilet paper, but really more a forerunner of wet wipes.
1875: The first American patent for a toilet, the “plunger closet,” is granted.
1890: The Scott brothers bring TP on a roll to the mass market.
1942: The St. Andrews Paper Mill produces the first two-ply roll.
1960s: Procter & Gamble develops TAD (through-air-drying) machines that leave the wood pulp softer and remain the method for making premium toilet paper.
2006: Renova reboots the midcentury trend of color toilet paper, beginning with black.
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association
MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION
Can bidets save the day?
The sanitary squirters are a big business in many countries, particularly in Europe or South America, but not the US. Why? In The Atlantic, Maria Teresa Hart traces it to sexual mores: during the first half of the 20th century, bidets were linked in the American imagination with birth control, European bordellos, and menstruation. At the same time, American companies had pioneered selling the paper product with femininity and gentility, so the device never crossed over.
But as wellness and environmental consciousness cross streams, there might be an opening for bidets in the US, an almost completely untapped market at a mere $106 million a year. Bidet companies hope to turn environmental consciousness into a revenue stream.
Do bidets actually work better? Shannon Palus of The Wirecutter asked around, and no one knows—in part because rigorous studies require a placebo, and, well, “there’s no way to convince someone that a device is shooting water at their bottom without actually doing it.” (They use more water than toilets—but a toilet paper roll requires 37 gallons just to produce.)
If companies are going to crack the American market, they’d do well to follow the Japanese, who track the sales of “washlets” as a measure of national prosperity, and are up from about 15% market penetration three decades ago to almost 80% now. Without much room to grow and with a shrinking population, Japanese companies want overseas customers to flush their TP habit.
Reuters/Lee Jae-Won
POP QUIZ
What's the list price of Kylie Jenner’s toilet?
$10,400
$3,300
$550
$28,000
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THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK!
Cutting down the TP takers
Have you ever been in a public or office bathroom where pulling toilet paper was like pulling teeth? That’s a feature, not a bug. It’s called “controlled delivery,” and it prevents people from getting a big wad at once. “There’s a little bit of larceny in all human beings,” Michael Terzano, a janitor turned building-services VP, told the Wall Street Journal. “People tend to do their vandalism in private. What’s more private than a bathroom stall?” A vice president at Georgia Pacific estimated that the inconvenience saved 20% on costs.
Frustrating? Sure. But probably preferable to using face-recognition technology to track TP thieves, as was implemented in the restrooms at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven park.
WATCH THIS!
How is toilet paper made? Watch how the magic happens.
PAPER KILLS ROCK
What did people use before toilet paper?
The Old Farmer’s Almanac (there’s a hole in the corner to hang it in an outhouse)
“Water and the mechanical action of the left hand”
The Sears catalog (“which, historians tell us, might serve a family of regular habits for an entire season”)
Chugi, wooden sticks used specifically for wiping
Corn cobs
A tersorium (a sponge attached to a stick)
Pessoi (“pebbles” of ceramic)
FUN FACT!
The Dutch are also heavy luxury-TP consumers, which means they flush a lot of high-quality cellulose into the sewer. A new company is now filtering sewage to extract the cellulose, to the tune of about 900 pounds a day, to reinforce asphalt for longer-lasting roads.
Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
PSA
Don’t flush wet wipes!
The next level up from luxury toilet paper is adult wet wipes, which are sometimes billed as “flushable.” Which, yes, they’ll go down the toilet—but because they take hours instead of minutes to break down in sewers, they combine with other effluents of affluence to create fatbergs, which can weigh hundreds of tons and take weeks of the worst possible work to remove.
Read the Obsession on fatbergs
TAKE ME DOWN THIS 🐰 HOLE!
In “The Great Toilet Paper War,” journalist Ron Rosenbaum writes about the creation of Mr. Whipple, subject of more than 500 ads over 21 years for the Charmin brand.
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