World Toilet Paper Consumption, Mapped
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American spending on it increased by $2 billion in 2020. But specialists say it’s time to put toilet paper behind us.
The environmental toll is massive. Logging for the type of paper used in toilet rolls affects over a million acres per year of priceless Canadian boreal forests alone, emitting upwards of 26 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and leaving 90 percent of the disturbed land exhausted. And that’s just one source. But sometimes, these statistics can be challenging to visualize. If you laid out all the rolls of toilet paper used in each nation in one year, what would that look like?
QS Supplies decided to reveal the impact toilet paper is having on the environment by finding out:
- Toilet paper consumption per country in a year in both miles and km
- The countries that use the most toilet paper are visualized in the solar system
Table of Contents
Methodology
QS Supplies gathered data with desk research, searching for the average number of toilet rolls used per capita in every country.
Where data was only available in kg, the team assumed the average weight of a roll of toilet paper was 227g and then converted the data into rolls.
QS Supplies then used country population data and life expectancy data for each country from Worldometer to determine the number of rolls used per person, per year, per lifetime, and for the country as a whole.
According to WorldAtlas and The Independent, an average-sized single pine tree can make around 1,500 rolls of toilet paper, so the team used this estimate to determine how many trees each country needs to produce the number of toilet rolls needed for its consumption levels.
Toilet paper consumption in a lifetime by country
If you were going to lay out all the toilet paper you would have used in your lifetime, how long would that line of toilet paper be? If you’re from Portugal, the United States, or Germany, it would be over one thousand kilometers – longer than the entire length of the United Kingdom.
The lifetime supply of toilet paper in Portugal is incredible at 11,323 rolls, which would add up to 643 miles (1035 kilometers) worth of toilet paper, while an average Nigerian will only use about 3 miles or 4.8 kilometers (a mere 56 rolls) in their whole life.
The countries that use the most toilet paper
If you laid out the rolls of toilet paper used in each country in one year, what would that look like? For China, it would b an incredible 4 billion miles long, which is further than the distance from Earth to Neptune. For the United States, it’s 2.65 billion miles, while both Japan and Germany use enough toilet paper to stretch out beyond Jupiter.
China
According to mathematicians and experts, one tree makes 1,500 rolls of toilet paper. It might not be used as commonly in China as it is in many western nations – just 49 rolls per person per year, but with a population of over 1.4 billion, that still equates to over 47 million trees every year – enough to fill an area equivalent to 117.5 thousand football pitches.
United States
Each person in the United States uses 141 toilet rolls each year, so more than 31 million trees are needed to cover the nation’s habits, assuming a single tree can make 1,500 rolls of toilet paper as estimated by industry experts. That’s an area equivalent to 77.5 thousand football pitches.
United Kingdom
According to industry experts, a single tree can make 1,500 toilet paper rolls. With every person in the United Kingdom using up 127 rolls of toilet paper a year, the country needs 5.7 million trees to keep supermarket shelves stocked – that amount of trees would cover over 14 thousand football pitches.
Australia
Australians use 88 rolls of toilet paper a year each – that’s nearly 1.5 million trees a year that get wiped out, according to experts who calculate that one tree can make 1,500 rolls of toilet paper. That’s enough trees to cover 3750 football pitches.
Key Findings
- China uses over 4 billion miles of toilet paper each year–more than any other country.
- The average Portuguese person uses 643.36 miles of toilet paper in their lifetime–more than any other nationality.
- It takes 31.11 million trees each year to supply the US with toilet paper.
- Stretched out, the UK’s annual toilet paper usage would reach Mars and back–when Mars is at its furthest point from Earth.
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Unclear what Nigerians are up to.
If the entire world switched to bidets, we would be subject to myriad articles complaining of “skyrocketing water consumption, which is killing the earth’s ecosystem.” We would read about Water Wars and the destabilization of water scarce regions.
I think it’s generally a good thing to draw attention to scarce resources and prevent waste through knowledge. But these articles border on “guilt trips” and the snowflake generations start to tremble and then agitate the rest of us with their activism.
The fact is that trees grow back, and ALL toilet paper is essentially “recycled.” These are pine trees that are specifically grown for this purpose, like any other crop. They are not grown for decorative reasons, or to replace old growth forests.
It’s no different than the corn, soybeans and cotton that is grown every year. Will we hear about “miles and miles” of jeans and cotton shirts next?
water wars aren’t that unlikely in the near future even without bidets
Well, this is one issue where Mother Earth is gonna have to take a hit. I’ll use what’s needed, if you know what I mean. If I have to kill a few trees, so be it.
Lots of behinds that need tending to…
So the writers solution..?
Any alternative is going to be attacked for the same “reason”…
“Each person in the United States uses 141 toilet rolls each year”