Wednesday, July 11, 2001

before you throw out that old bog roll...

How bored am I?

I was thinking, how much toilet paper is wasted per year, just because the companies insist on gluing the paper to the roll?

So I worked it out

13cm of toilet paper is wasted on every roll by gluing it to the roll.
Multiplied by the 6 rolls per week in a flat of 5.
And again by 52 weeks in a year
There are 75 years on the average person's life.
Then divide that by the 5 people.
60840cm of toilet paper is wasted per person in their lifetime.
This equates to 60.84m of toilet paper wasted in a person's life.

I then went one step further:
If 3.4 million people live in New Zealand that is 27580.8kms toilet paper wasted per year.

Of course I haven't taken into consideration toilet roll variences and the fact that some companies use no glue wotsoever, but still I feel that this is justified by the fact I calculated it for one-ply and many house holds use 2, 3, or even 4 ply.

Now, lets take into consideration the COST. A pack of 12 Budget 2 ply toilet tissue costs $5.20 and contains 220 sheets per roll (if the packaging is to be believed).

This is an average cost of $0.02 per sheet.
Each sheet is 12cm long.
This is 5070 sheets in a person's lifetime.
If you multiply this number by $0.02 you will realise in your lifetime you will waste $101.40 on toilet paper, simply because it is glued to the roll.
Then, according to my calculations, New Zealanders waste $4,596,800 per year on that toilet paper glued to the roll.

Of course, again, I haven't taken into account the cost of the roll, shipping, packaging etc...

Isn't that amazing...