One Bounty = Two Charmin
I’m not panicking. The Corona virus will take its toll and, like other pandemics, burn itself out. I secretly believe this is Mother Earth saying, “Enough!” as she’s done several times in human history. We’ll get through it. A few of us—relatively speaking—will be casualties and fatalities, but the overwhelming majority, sadly, will pick up where it left off. We’re not fast learners.
I find the toilet paper hoarding weird and frankly fascinating. Yesterday, as I entered my building’s elevator, a woman holding a twelve-pack of Charmin glared at me, then hugged her supply to her bosom as if it were a child I was going to kidnap. The thought had not occurred to me. Really.
I am particularly amused by Americans’ obsession with wiping their butts. For all those who have been foiled in their attempts to stockpile TP, I offer a simple solution. Purchase a roll of paper towels—Bounty will do if you're feeling, ahem, flush--and cut the roll in half (not lengthwise) with a bread knife. Ta da. You now have fully absorbent TP. One roll of Bounty makes two rolls of Charmin.
According to the environmental folks at Get Green Now, an average American uses about 24 rolls of toilet paper yearly and, collectively, Americans spend about $8 billion annually on toilet paper. I won’t bother trying to figure out how much we spend per wipe, but I invite readers who have nothing better to entertain themselves with while quarantined to do the math.
The Natural Resources Defense Council says, “Each person in the United States consumes about 50 pounds of tissue paper (including toilet paper) per year, which adds up to about 15 billion pounds of tissue consumed per year by the entire country. That equals to about 20% of the entire tissue paper products supply in the world.”
By the way, Americans only make up about four percent of the world’s population.
I suppose I could write a lot more on the ethics of all this. I won’t remind you that a pound of toilet paper per week per person seems excessive. Neither will I mention how we’ve created Sargasso seas of toilet paper in every major body of water, and how we should be grateful because there are people in poor countries that don’t have enough toilet paper. I won’t suggest you swipe napkins from restaurants, as I saw an elderly lady do today.
You shouldn’t be in restaurants in the first place.
I find the toilet paper hoarding weird and frankly fascinating. Yesterday, as I entered my building’s elevator, a woman holding a twelve-pack of Charmin glared at me, then hugged her supply to her bosom as if it were a child I was going to kidnap. The thought had not occurred to me. Really.
I am particularly amused by Americans’ obsession with wiping their butts. For all those who have been foiled in their attempts to stockpile TP, I offer a simple solution. Purchase a roll of paper towels—Bounty will do if you're feeling, ahem, flush--and cut the roll in half (not lengthwise) with a bread knife. Ta da. You now have fully absorbent TP. One roll of Bounty makes two rolls of Charmin.
According to the environmental folks at Get Green Now, an average American uses about 24 rolls of toilet paper yearly and, collectively, Americans spend about $8 billion annually on toilet paper. I won’t bother trying to figure out how much we spend per wipe, but I invite readers who have nothing better to entertain themselves with while quarantined to do the math.
The Natural Resources Defense Council says, “Each person in the United States consumes about 50 pounds of tissue paper (including toilet paper) per year, which adds up to about 15 billion pounds of tissue consumed per year by the entire country. That equals to about 20% of the entire tissue paper products supply in the world.”
By the way, Americans only make up about four percent of the world’s population.
I suppose I could write a lot more on the ethics of all this. I won’t remind you that a pound of toilet paper per week per person seems excessive. Neither will I mention how we’ve created Sargasso seas of toilet paper in every major body of water, and how we should be grateful because there are people in poor countries that don’t have enough toilet paper. I won’t suggest you swipe napkins from restaurants, as I saw an elderly lady do today.
You shouldn’t be in restaurants in the first place.
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