I was in the store buying my 16 pack of TP, and boggling at the prices. Over $1 a roll for Charmin. Which got me thinking…
What is the markup on toilet paper? How much is the manufacturer making on basically scrap paper I wipe my butt with?
Anyone have insider info?
Toilet paper is mostly virgin wood pulp paper, usually a fairly high grade. It has to be soft for comfort, strong for tear resistance, but also to dissolve readily in sewage treatment facilities. And it has to be a pretty white color.
Scrap paper & recycled paper is generally brown or gray (due to leftover ink), and of mixed quality. Most of it goes into cardboard, bags (like brown grocery sacks) or boxes (like cereal boxes).
Here’s a test: Wipe your butt with toilet paper. Then wipe your butt with scrap paper. Feel the difference.
Unless you’re in Europe. There, from my experience, they really do use something akin to newsprint for toilet paper.
A NY Times piece on TP.
Regarding the articles mention of Canadian forests as a source of TP fibre…I wouldn’t worry too much if the fibre is coming from BC. A good chunk of pulp production is now using dead Pine wiped out by beetles.
Ok, I can believe that recycled paper isn’t used. But I don’t believe that someone is taking lumber grade cuts out of a log and shredding it for TP. By scrap, I was referring to the parts that can’t be sold as lumber-grade wood.
Drive anywhere in the South (U.S.) You’ll see row upon row of future butt wipe
Granted the virgin wood goes towards other products.
Which is replanted every 8-10 years??? I maybe way off the mark on the replanting part.
As to the Question of mark up I have no idea
Georgia-Pacific has a whole plant dedicated to making T-P in Zachary Louisiana.
So I would think its pretty good for the beginning.
Good. Now that some actual answers have been posted, I can give my answer:
It’s pretty crappy.
nvm
it is often on sale to draw people into the store. on sale the profit margin might be paper thin.
There’s a liability issue, too. There was a lady I know who was shopping, and picked up a package of TP from one of those big stacks they have. Well, the whole pile tumbled over and knocked her to the ground. They took her to the hospital, but in the end, she was OK.
Turns out she only had soft tissue damage.
In NW Oregon, where I live, toilet paper is made from scrap wood that has been converted to wood chips. The limbs, stumps and other debris that is left over after logging operations have taken trees suitable for lumber. What remains after lumber is cut goes into chips, which are converted to wood pulp. The scraps from the mills are also converted to chips. When I was young all this stuff was either burned in forest or in wigwam burners at the mill.
To say it is being made out of virgin wood gives the wrong image. Yes, it is made out of fresh wood instead of recycled paper, but this wood is mostly scrap wood that used to be left in the forest, piled into huge piles, and then burned in what is called in the Pacific NW as a slash burn. Now, very little is left on the forest floor.
The business is very competetive, mostly between Georgia Pacific and Scott Paper. Competition helps to keep the price low. The process is complex.
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Toilet-Paper.html
My wife is busy tonight operating a machine bigger than your house, that wraps toilet paper.
Every time you wipe your butt an Angel Soft gets it’s wings.
perhaps you are just getting price-shocked by a “premium” price-differentiated product? Also, I have heard that during “sale” price goes down quite a bit, which suggests a big markup.
Incidentally, a good approach to getting a more rigorous answer here would be to look at prices in a poorer country since over there we would expect distribution markup to be less. E.g. maybe somebody could tell us how much a roll costs in China on a sale.
Why do you begrudge people who ply the poop trade their profits? Wipe out their profits and you will need to use your hand because they won’t make big rolls of TP without big profits. Yeah, it’s a shitty job, but somebody has to clean up in a bare market.
snicker
I only speak from my experience working in the BC forest industry.
They generally don’t. Chip logs are generally poor quality, juvenile, or recently, dead. They are essentially useless as sawlogs. Chip fibre is also obtained from log processing scrap. Tree-farm timber usually has a very fast rotation, especially if it is grown for chips as chip logs don’t require the larger dimensions of a sawlog.
All logs are graded before they enter the log yard and processed based on their most efficient use.
However, high quality paper, especially products that require a strong strength are usually produced from pulp coming from non-sawlog longer rotation stands (not necessarily ‘old growth’) because of the denser fibre offered.
Apparently a lot of the second rotation stands of Douglas Fir on Vancouver Island are being relegated to low-grade pulp status because their fast growth results in weak fibre not appropriate for lumbering.
Believe it or not, it is really hard (in BC, at least) to secure pulp fibre. Chip prices are generally pretty low and there is a multitude of tenure issues with the government.
This OP is great because I’ve wondered the same thing, and have been told to get a life for doing so. I typically buy that $1 mega-roll TP which isn’t the softest in the world, but so what? Considering what I do with it, I don’t really think it’s worth paying for cutesy little patterns or quilting. Interesting article, ting. The Charmin Effect, heh.
Why is there such a smear campaign on TP?