To hear older generations tell it, everything was better in the past. Gas cost a few cents a gallon; children respected their elders; toilet paper came with 650 sheets to a roll, and the only thing you had to worry about was the constant existential threat of nuclear apocalypse looming over your head.
Now, chances are at least one of those things was news to you, and we’re betting it’s not the gas or the nuclear war. So, to answer your question: yeah, toilet paper used to come in 650-sheet packages. If that’s not hitting you as remarkable, though, here’s the context: today, a regular roll of Charmin sold in the US has just 56 sheets per roll.
The incredible disappearing toilet paper
Thanks to Mark Dent over at The Hustle, we actually have quite a detailed picture of the decades-long toilet paper shrinkflation process. In the 1970s, he writes, “Charmin’s regular roll had 650 sheets of single ply toilet paper […] By 1975, the roll shrunk to 500 and then to 400 in 1979.”
But “Charmin was far from done,” he continues. “By 1986, the sheet count had dropped to 380. On eBay, I found nearly identical 1988 Charmin packages – one contained 300 single ply sheets per roll and the other had 280.”
Not only are toilet paper manufacturers offering fewer sheets per roll, he points out, but those sheets are also smaller than they used to be. A Charmin regular roll in 1966 used to be made up of square sheets of side length 4.5 inches (11.43 centimeters), he reports – measure one yourself today, and you’ll find it a paltry 3.92-by-4 inch rectangle (9.96 by 10.16 centimeters).
Even adjusted for inflation, that results in a price increase of 700 percent per square foot since the 1960s.
And, lest you think we’re picking on Charmin in particular, other manufacturers have been just as sneaky. You might think a brand like Scott 1000 would be immune from this kind of shrinkflation – after all, its very name is a promise that each roll comes with that many sheets. And yet long-term analysis by Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org, has found that even they have shrunk, with the weight of a standard four-pack going from 32.2 ounces (913 grams) in the past to 23.6 ounces (669 grams) today.
Why are toilet paper rolls so much smaller than they used to be?
So, what’s behind this egregious shrinkage? In an effort to figure out the root causes, Dent spoke to TTO-BMA, two affiliated companies that track, forecast, and analyze the wood pulp market. As the “single most important ingredient for toilet paper,” Dent explained, there’s no greater driver of the intrinsic cost of a roll than the price of wood pulp.
Unfortunately, that price is notoriously volatile, it turns out. That wasn’t always the case – before the 1980s, it was pretty stable – but these days, thanks partly to the emergence of China as a global poopin’ superpower (pooperpower?) and partly to our old friend climate change, the price of toilet paper wood pulp can rocket from just over $600 per metric tonne to more than $900, down to around $750, up to $1,000, and all the way back to $600 again, all in the course of just three years – specifically, 2021-2024, in case you thought those numbers were for illustrative purposes only.
For major brands who want consistent quality, there’s no way around this kind of volatility – or at least, that’s what the companies say. Of course, it doesn’t really explain why toilet roll brands in other countries have been less affected by this specific type of shrinkflation: in the UK, for example, the equivalent of Charmin, Cushelle, is still sold with 270 sheets per roll, while other brands boast anywhere from 170 sheets per roll to 380 depending on the brand.
The trouble is, US brands are designed to account for a level of snobbery around what Americans use to wipe their poopy holes. The ratios of hard- to soft-wood pulp are slightly different in the US than elsewhere, with around 30 percent comprising the more expensive softwood pulp, TTO-BMA’s D’arcy Schnekenburger told Dent – that’s three times as much as other markets’ standard 10 percent.
The reason for that, is to meet a “higher expectation for strength,” he explained – though he adds that “consistency both in their operations and consistency of product are more important than anything else.”
“They won’t even change the supplier of their softwood if they can help it,” he said.
A Tissue Issue
And, you might think, so what? So toilet paper is getting smaller and more expensive; that’s the price of a comfy butthole baby! But all this devotion to “consistency” has a much more troubling consequence: it’s destroying some of the most ecologically important areas in not just North America, but the entire world.
“Now, more than ever, it is clear that the impacts of manufacturing single-use tissue products from forest fiber are not only severe but also avoidable,” argues the Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2023 Issue With Tissue Fifth Edition report.
“Companies know that there are more responsible ways to create tissue products than using forest fiber – namely, using recycled materials and responsibly sourced alternative fibers – and many have already embraced these solutions in their product lines,” it says. “Yet the largest, most powerful tissue companies have failed to adopt these more sustainable sourcing practices. Instead they remain entrenched in a destructive ‘tree-to-toilet pipeline’ model that continues to come at an extreme cost to Indigenous communities, the climate, threatened species, and forests like the boreal in Canada.”
Luckily, this latest in the series of reports has found that consumer behavior is shifting, with more people prioritizing sustainability in their buying habits – and, in turn, more brands offering sustainable toilet tissue products.
But if you’re hoping to match brand loyalty with environmental mindfulness, you may be out of luck: “Of the toilet paper brands surveyed in the tissue scorecard’s fifth edition, half of the brands that received A and B grades were launched within only the past five years,” the report notes – while “the ‘Big Three’ U.S. tissue producers – Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Georgia-Pacific – make their flagship household tissue brands almost exclusively from forest fiber, consistently earning them failing scores.”
What can we do about it?
While the report has much to say about what policymakers and corporations should be doing to mitigate the damage, it can often be hard to see what difference we can make as individuals. But in fact, the authors write, “consumers have enormous power in helping steer the market toward greater sustainability.”
So, you could, as 500,000 people recently did to Proctor & Gamble (the company behind brands such as Charmin, Bounty, and Puffs), petition corporations to add sustainable options to their lineups, the report suggests – or, failing that, ask local store managers to stock more of those options. There are also more everyday changes you could make: actually buying more sustainable options, including tissue made with recycled content, and simply using less where you can.
The best part: not only will it help the environment, but it will also save you money. After all, with the way this shrinkflation is going, if we don’t start changing our tissue habits, then we’re literally just throwing money down the toilet.
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