According to several internet searches, world-wide slang for "toilet paper" include the following: loo paper, toilet roll, date roll, dunny roll, bog roll, bathroom tissue, toilet tissue, jacks roll, butt wipe, TP, or just tissue. (I will refrain from documenting other rather inappropriate slang.)Upon more research I discovered that Americans purchase 26 BILLION rolls of throne manuscript each year. That averages out to 20,000 sheets of paper per person each year. Using the 20,000 sheets as a baseline, I've calculated that per day the sheet usage is 55 sheets!
Okay, I used to live with 5 other girls in college and I don't think WE even used 55 sheets a day.
Umm, hmmm, well, now that I think about it, besides Carrie (who would probably re-use loo paper if it were sanitary), I bet we flushed a significantly higher number of sheets than the average. I wish we hosted a competition to see who could rank the highest on a usage chart. The best was that you could tell who was on the pot just by the sound of the TP rolling. Jessie went to the bathroom the most, but definitely didn't use the most paper as she probably double counted the number of sheets (she was destined to work in a credit union). Janine was pretty cautious in her unravelling from the roll so as not to ruffle any feathers by using more than her share (that's just her style, and she came from an army of siblings). Erin, well, she wasn't around enough to put a dent in the fluffy wonder. Then there's Anna. You could hear the roll flutter for a solid 3 seconds before a nice clean rip occured prior to Anna leaving her porcelain pony. And I don't have a clue about my usage. Though, just this morning I intentionally only used 3 sheets. Another old roommate, Sarah, used to say, "Three for a pee." I remember arguing over this phenomenon because each brand of TP contains varying levels of absorption and safety!
Allow me to arrive at my point:
Over Valentine's Day weekend, Sam and I opened our home to a handful of freinds and family. For each dinner, we had 11 people in attendance. I don't believe it fair to count 11 people in my sheet usage evaluation for the weekend, however, I cannot find an equation to determine the amount of time each person existed in my home, let alone my loo. So, 11 it is. After crunching numbers and taking a quick potty break, my calculations revealed that the American usage average is EXACTLY the SAME for my commode comrades: 55 sheets per person per day. That amounts to 3 rolls of Sam's Club "Members Mark" bathroom tissue, the comfy, durable 2-ply style for a weekend of happy loo-ing.
Feel smarter now?
3 comments:
Tray, I shan't mention your other environmentally friendly personal products, but when I first started reading this post I was SURE you were going to say that you've decided to switch to reusable wipes instead of TP!
I can hear the sound of the toilet roll being yanked by Anna to this day. That is SOOO funny that you said i would resue it if it were possible. You would find it most interesting that we don't flush our paper in the land of Kazakhstan. Sick..yes, but we get used to it. We throw it away. Picture our York village apartment if we had to throw it away and then somehow rotate the jobs of throwing the crap away...
EWWW CARRIE!! A york village full of smelly...TP Trash, G-R-O-S-S!!! And I must say Tara, you have overestimated my sheet counting, I in fact do not count a single square... :) i really enjoyed your topic of discussion though!
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