THIS IS NEWS? I must have been in a cave for years.
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Fortune magazine’s toilet paper numbers are full of crap. If we do math with the actual weight of a roll of toilet paper, we find a yearly total of far less than an environmentalist group claims.
Kyle Sammin
By Kyle Sammin
March 2, 2019
Fortune Magazine’s 2.2 million Twitter followers woke up Friday morning to a news story that seems unbelievable. According to the magazine, “The average American uses 3 rolls of toilet paper each week—and it’s devastating forests.” Not everyone has the same bathroom needs and habits, but most people’s reactions to the tweet were similar: that seems like a lot.
That sort of reaction by ordinary people ought to have convinced Fortune’s editors to fact-check the information. Instead, they took the figures disseminated by the Natural Resources Defense Council—an environmental advocacy group—and republished them nearly word-for-word, turning the magazine into a microphone for a special interest group.
Making Sense of Messy Figures
Clicking through to the story, we read that “The U.S. consumes more toilet paper than any other country, almost three rolls per person each week. And the brands they choose to use aren’t sustainable, with hardwood trees being pulped to create the soft toilet paper consumers want. Following the United States’ annual use of 141 rolls of toilet paper per capita is Germany with 134 rolls and the United Kingdom with 127. Japanese consumers average 91 rolls annually, while the Chinese average just 49.”
Leaving aside the comparisons to foreign nations—China has its own unique issues with toilet paper—let’s focus on that figure of 141 rolls per person per year. Taking it at face value, that works out to 2.71 rolls per American per week. So already we have some exaggeration in the Fortune story, but we could reasonably chalk that up to rounding off the number to make a more succinct headline.
Fortune links to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Web page from which the claims are drawn. That study also notes the 141 rolls per person per year for Americans, and gives as its source a study conducted by Statista, a market research group. In their survey of the toilet paper industry, Statista also gives the 141 rolls figure, but for the first time in this footnote hunt, we receive a crucial bit of information: Statista informs readers that their figure assumes that one roll of toilet paper weighs 90 grams.
http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/02/no-average-american-doesnt-use-three-rolls-toilet-paper-per-week/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&;utm_campaign=c3bd8ee94b-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-c3bd8ee94b-84073723
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