It's a truism that everything is bigger in America, as you can see from cars and houses. But perhaps nowhere is the virtue of bigger being better more bizarrely evident than in the way toilet paper is sold. When you step into the bathroom products section of a supermarket, you find yourself in a fast-paced world of changing numbers. For example, a pack of 18 mega toilet paper rolls magically turns into 90 “regular” toilet paper rolls. The label highlights this large number in a large font so that you don't foolishly think that 18 just equals 18. Another pack might claim that 12 rolls of even thicker toilet paper are equivalent to 96 regular rolls.
The advertising is clear: toilet paper is available in abundance. If there's one rule of thumb that everyone should follow, it's that you'll never run out of TP, so that's good news. Early in the pandemic, we saw anxiety about this situation reach new heights. At the time, large numbers of people competed to obtain as much toilet paper as possible, causing shortages and extreme price gouging. The Americans' massive vehicles and palatial residences may actually exist to transport and store giant bulk packs of this bathroom essentials.
There's also the irony that despite all the hype about their gigantic size, toilet paper rolls are generally getting smaller. This is a key example of “shrinkflation,” the tendency for manufacturers to charge the same price (or a slightly higher price) for fewer products. This makes it more difficult than ever to figure out if you're being scammed. None of the three major toilet paper manufacturers contacted by Box responded to requests for comment.
“I can't think of another category that's as confusing as toilet paper,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at consulting firm GlobalData. Questionable numerical claims about the actual value of “mega” rolls allow brands to promote a perception of value without actually showing the work. Figuring out the price per roll of toilet paper can be tedious, but it does give you an idea of how expensive the product has become.
“Consumers aren't going to like that, so they're all making it a little bit more opaque,” Saunders says.
Get ready to do the math on the back of your toilet paper
The most obvious problem plaguing the toilet paper industry is the lack of standardization. Double, triple, and mega roll are inaccurate descriptions that vary by brand. They are not units of measurement. To be specific, toilet paper packaging often acknowledges that these sizes are relative to “regular” rolls. Sometimes it means the regular size of your own brand, but sometimes it means the regular size of a competitor's 1st tier.
Naturally, the so-called standard sizes are also not consistent. For example, Charmin's regular roll contains 55 two-ply sheets, but it's often difficult to even find the brand's regular size toilet paper in stores. Mega rolls are often touted as having four times the number of seats as the mythical “regular” to which they are compared. In other words, Mr. Cottonelle's regular roll contains 61 sheets, while Quilt Northern contains a troublesome 73.75 sheets, and Angel Soft contains 80 sheets. That's it. But even these numbers are perplexing, since in real life, a standard toilet paper roll often contains more than 100 sheets.
The number of pieces per roll ratio can also change depending on whether you are considering one, two, or three layers. (Not to give you a headache, but seat dimensions also vary.) Mega Roll is just one of many sizes offered by the brand, all with slightly different naming conventions. Cottonelle sells the Mega, Family Mega, or Super Mega, while Charmin now offers the Mega XXL and even the “Forever Roll,” which is large enough to require a separate holder. The clutter of toilet paper jargon seems to have no end.
All of this makes comparison shopping much more difficult than for your average household item. To make matters worse, there is no single consistent way to price toilet paper. Some retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and Target list prices per 100 pieces, but you still need to account for variations in the number of pieces per roll for each brand. Walgreens shows a price per sheet, while Home Depot shows a very unhelpful price per roll. Irregular unit pricing is a problem for many consumer products, according to Chuck Bell, director of advocacy programs at Consumer Reports. Bell said piece pricing is “directly mandated only in nine states,” but 10 other states have implemented it voluntarily. “It's difficult to compare products online that are worth the price.”
No wonder people try to take matters into their own hands. In late 2018, a California man named Victor Lee launched a “Toilet Paper Value Calculator” that calculates the number of rolls, number of sheets per roll, and applicable discounts. Lee told Wirecutter in 2022 that something like 0.253 cents per piece is probably a reasonable price. While there are no longer toilet paper shortages or people panic-buying pallets of toilet paper, the urge to do so is still there, but toilet paper is a much more expensive commodity now than it was before the pandemic. Especially now, several years into the pandemic. of high inflation. Before the pandemic, a pack of 36 Charmin Ultra Soft Rolls cost $30.95 on Amazon, according to a report from consumer watchdog Public Interest Research Group. As of this writing, the same pack costs $59 on the site. (It was on sale for up to $114.99 in December 2020.)
Most name brand toilet paper now far exceeds Ly's price point. A 30-pack of Charmin Ultra Strong Mega Rolls comes in at 0.5 cents each, while a 36-pack of Scott 1000 toilet paper comes in at about 0.083 cents each. A 30-pack of Kirkland toilet paper sells for $23.49 at the time of writing, which works out to 0.206 cents each.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the cost of making toilet paper may have risen in recent years due to a slowdown in wood production, which has reduced the availability of wood pulp, the material most toilet paper is made from. It is said that there is. Couple this with the fact that more people are now working remotely and spending less time in the office bathroom, as journalist Will Oremus reported in his article on the pandemic toilet paper shortage. This means the average consumer is using more toilet paper at home and is tired of seeing their bathroom supplies budget skyrocket.
Shrinkflation occurs again
But toilet paper makers have figured out a way to keep prices about the same, at least at a glance. Even if you buy the same toilet paper every month, it might just end up costing you more when you look at the fine print and realize there are fewer sheets in each roll. A recent analysis by loan marketplace LendingTree found that toilet paper is the most problematic product that has shrunk in size or volume since 2019 or 2020. Angel Soft's 12 mega roll packs have essentially shrunk from 429 cards per roll to 320 cards per roll. But at least the price has also dropped by 15%. Meanwhile, Charmin Ultra Strong Megaroll shrunk by 15% and its price increased by 11%.
This isn't a new strategy only being used by toilet paper makers. People have been complaining about product shrinkage for years. A 2015 Consumer Reports article compared top brands of toilet paper rolls and showed that some had savings of more than 20 percent. At the time, manufacturers argued that the reason for this was that if the quality of the paper improved, the amount of paper used would decrease.
The old Charmin regular roll had 82 sheets, but now there are only 55.
Former consumer protection lawyer Edgar Dvorsky has been promoting this shady practice (which he calls “downsizing”) for decades on his websites MousePrint.org and ConsumerWorld.org. I've been tracking it for a long time.
“I remember back in the 1960s, Mounds candy bars were 2 ounces and it was kind of a big deal,” he told Vox. He noted that old Charmin toilet paper contained as many as 650 sheets in a single-layer roll. The current Mega XXL count is just 440 pieces. The old Charmin regular roll had 82 sheets, but now there are only 55. The strategy is to reduce the current roll size and invent new tiers (with more ridiculous names) that can command higher prices.
Consumer brands' job is to “make people think they're getting more out of it,” Dvorsky said. “It's all a name game, a numbers game. If you don't realize that, you'll get snookered.”
How to avoid flushing money down the toilet
Toilet paper is marketed as both a great value and a strange luxury: you get four rolls for the price of one. Toilet paper is something that is quickly disposed of and literally flushed down the drain, but toilet paper commercials almost always focus on its cozy, cushiony softness, or special “quilting” or “diamond” textures that add a touch of luxury to the product. The focus is on the texture of the weave. There are also scented toilet paper and toilet paper with colorful patterns. One of Quilted Northern's April Fool's Day ads pokes fun at its industry's over-the-top promotional style, proclaiming a “return” to handmade, artisanal toilet paper.
After all, this is because we spend so much time on it in a very intimate way, and such bells and whistles are important to some of us. “Obviously there are some [who]”For medical reasons, I like to use really soft toilet paper,” says Sanders. “Some people prefer extra-strength toilet paper.” For others, it's a pure bang-for-back play, and they may gravitate towards the pack with the most rolls (not necessarily the best value). ).
The range of options does not matter: from sparse in one layer to luxurious with a lilac scent. That means it's very difficult to tease out the value you're actually getting. As Dvorsky points out, consumers can bring a scale to weigh a pack of toilet paper every time they go to the store, but what can they do? #ShrinkFlated Which of the options? You have to buy one, but that's not an area where you have a choice. Although a single brand offers many different versions, just three manufacturers – Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Georgia-Pacific – account for approximately 80 percent of the bathroom tissue market.
You can also switch to commercial grade toilet paper. It's much cheaper, but (well) the quality is much poorer. Consumer-grade toilet paper is soft, perhaps soaked with lotion, and often embossed with fun little patterns, but the stuff you find in public restrooms is hard and so thin that you only have to look at it. It will break. Still, a 12-pack of commercial toilet paper at Home Depot costs about $34 as of this writing, and one roll is about 700 feet long. Assuming the length of a consumer toilet paper square is approximately 4 inches, even a 440-sheet Charmin Mega XXL roll would be less than 147 feet.
While lawmakers and President Joe Biden have slammed companies over shrinkflation and even introduced legislation to try to ban the practice, Dvorsky and Bell say it is unlikely to become law. I don't think so. But increasing transparency around product sizes, making unit price labels more consistent, and requiring consumers to be notified when sizes change would go a long way in helping shoppers. Last year, French grocery chain Carrefour began placing labels next to smaller packaged foods and drinks before negotiating prices with suppliers.
What is certain is that deceptive and confusing accounting for toilet paper rolls should not be the norm. And in fact, it seems to be primarily a North American tradition. Other countries sell “mega” rolls, but there's no onerous calculation on the packaging claiming that a dozen rolls somehow exceeds that. Toilet paper is no small problem, especially for Americans. The United States ranks first in the world in per capita roll consumption, with each American using approximately 141 rolls per year as of 2018. Consumer Reports' buying guide once compared annual usage to 23 football fields.
One way to avoid the frustrating quagmire of counting rolls and sheets is to opt out of the game entirely. “I switched to bidets 10 years ago,” Dvorsky said.
