How to Beat 700 Percent Toilet Paper Inflation

The cost of butt wiping has quietly gone through the roof, with negative ripple effects that are global. Fortunately, there’s a low-cost work around to remove these bad actors from your life.

I read a great piece from Edgar Dworsky for The Hustle this morning, a deep dive into the history of toilet paper. The author, with good reason, describes how companies like Procter & Gamble have played a shell game with our throwaway tissues, engaging in “shrinkflation” since the 1960s. 

By promising us more and giving us less, we keep paying more for less, and doing more harm. Dworsky writes that consumers are price conscious, not net weight conscious, so "Four rolls [of Scott Paper], he discovered, weighed about two pounds 10+ years ago. They now weigh barely over a pound.”

Data Source: The Hustle

Corporate bad actors seem to think they have trapped toilet-paper addicted Americans in a corner. There’s little legal will or levers that seem to work on them.

Dworsky notes: "While it may seem deceptive to shrink toilet paper with little notice aside from the fine print—and to compare “Mega” and “Double” rolls to basically nonexistent products—it’s not against the law. Companies can shrink their product and charge the same amount, or more, while doing nothing to warn consumers aside from updating the fine print."

It’s not just gouging consumers that makes toilet paper a nefarious player in our daily lives, it’s how and where the wood pulp to make it is sourced. It’s an environmental and social nightmare, and the big guys apparently have done almost nothing to improve their sustainability metrics.

 According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, although some sustainable brands have emerged, “the tissue industry’s biggest players persist in fueling the degradation of boreal forests through their continued reliance on forest fiber to make their throwaway products, with devastating impacts for many Indigenous communities, treasured wildlife, and the global climate.”

Here’s just one other aspect of tissue paper to think about. Some evidence suggests it may be a major source of deadly PFAs in our waterways. Do we really need to use this stuff?

But here’s the thing. Toilet paper is a relic of another age. Simple, affordable technology exist that could make tissue paper a boutique product overnight. It’s called the bidet. 

Let me quote one of my own articles on the subject to put the potential impact of the U.S. homeowner switching from toilet paper dependency to bidet usage: 

“Annual toilet paper use in the U.S. tops out at 36.5 billion rolls. This equals 473,587,500,000 gallons of water and 15 million trees—and that doesn’t account for the additional water required to treat and dispose of toilet paper waste.”

The excuse for NOT having a bidet in every household bathroom have dissolved. Retrofit toilet bidet seats can be purchased online for about $40. I’ve installed a half dozen of these simple, mechanical devices and they work great. They’re easy to clean, look modern and should last for years.

And of course you can go for more elaborate, comfort oriented versions from well-known brands such as Kohler. Some of these are self-cleaning and can warm both the seat and the water, which might be nice in a cold climate.

My point is not to sell bidets. It’s to break the power of the tissue paper corporations. We don’t need to put up with their “shrinkflation” tactics for another day. Bringing home bathrooms into the modern age could save the average family about $150 a year. On top of that, their derrieres will smell better, and they won’t be supporting companies that don’t give a crap about the Climate Emergency. 

Indigenous Displacement from Toilet Paper. This documentary connects the dots between the boreal forest harvests of Canada and tissue paper pulp, as they affect native peoples.