Toilet paper? Wha? Most of us can go our entire lives—modulo COVID induced shortages—without ever thinking about it. You buy it, you use it, you buy some more. But COVID did make us think about this everyday item and wonder why something like COVID, that didn’t seem to have any direct connection with toilet paper and its production, would so dramatically affect its supply.
Once you start asking questions and looking into things, the next thing you notice is that the sheet count of rolls keep shrinking. It’s really hard to track this because the rolls are described with terms like “super duper mega size” rather than an actual sheet count.
Mark Dent has looked into it and has tried to make sense of how much toilet paper we’re really getting. The news isn’t good. He shows that, in fact, the sheet count has been shrinking for years—long before COVID. For example, in 1966 a roll of Charmin had 650 sheets. Today it has 224. The price per square foot has increased 800%.
It’s practically impossible for the average buyer to track this because comparisons are to products that are no longer available. Not all of this can be laid to price gouging. The wood pulp market that the manufacturers depend on is notoriously volatile and industry practices make it hard to nail down a stable price.
The manufacturers, rather than simply increasing the price per roll when necessary have resorted to stealth increases by decreasing the amount of product while keeping the price constant or increasing it only slightly.
After COVID, most of us are just happy to have a reliable supply and don’t think too much about the cost. Of course many people don’t have the luxury of being blasé about the price. They need roughly the same amount as the rest of us so this stealth inflation is a real issue for them.
For years, the government has been making noises about fixing this but, of course, things are the same. Take a look at Dent’s article. It’s enlightening.
