36 million rolls, seems a bit low. Maybe 36 billion? Although that would be 100 rolls per person per year, which seems a bit high.
You forgot women. 
Link to relevant column.
I thought 36 million rolls was a bit high myself. 320 million people in the country (roughly) - how many rolls does the average person use in a week?
Not 1/10th of a roll. The figure doesn’t make sense. Considering the retail price of one roll the companies would be struggling to survive, probably earning profits of no more than $3.6 million annually for all US sales. Something is not right here.
You forgot women [silly smile].
Yeah, 320 million people using 36 million rolls averages out to about 1 roll per 8.9 people per year. I go through a roll or two myself per week, so that number is definitely skewed. I was thinking maybe it was supposed to be 36 **billion **rolls, which works out to about 112.5 rolls per person per year, or a little more than two rolls a week per person. That seems more realistic, if possibly just a tad on the high side.
According to this sitethe average person uses 30 rolls of toilet paper a year. The total should be close to 10 billion rolls a year.
Do not make my bunghole angry.
I always thought that the reason Americans didnt like bidets was because having a clean nether region leads to oral sex (another French invention), and possibly even bum play. Activities frowned upon by American society. There are even laws in a lot of states forbidding such behavior.
Lets stick with missionary with most of our clothes on followed by bathing once a year… Dont want anyone thinkin we’re fruity. Said the forefathers, and it was so…
2.4 rolls per tree? Those are either very small trees or very large rolls of toilet paper.
Ah well, I see I was t the only one who felt the numbers a bit out of line. Carry on…
crap.
ditto. I thought odd that a tree produces a little over 2 rolls of TP. That can’t be right?
Unca Cece has some ‘splainin’ to do here.
The Toilet Paper Encyclopedia (gotta love the Internet) says Americans on average use up a roll in 5 days. That’s 73 rolls a year per household, or about 8 billion.
But that’s just in the most-used bathroom in the house, so the smaller bathrooms will add to that total.
Workplaces, stores, and other public restrooms will add large numbers of rolls.
36 billion rolls in total may be high, but not outlandishly so.
And teenaged girls. My nieces go through TP at an alarming rate; more than one roll/day between the two of them is not out of the question. They must clog their toilets on a weekly basis.
In the age of coal-fired computers, I went to the U of Evansville. Students would take TP from the dorms to ball games. If we won, the air would be filled with streamers of TP. If you spun it right, a thrown roll would unreel 60 feet or more in midair.
My brother at Purdue said the dorm restrooms were stripped bare of paper on every game day.
Also popular for decorating your neighbors’ trees.
And little kids can run through a lot of TP. I helped out a poverty-stricken neighbor a while back, by buying her a 24-pack of TP at Target, which I think works out cheaper than buying one or two rolls at a time at the 99¢ Store. A week later she was begging me to loan her another roll or two.
Seems her hyperactive 3-year-old kid threw half the package into the toilet.
I was working on an American Naval base in Korea back in 2001 For a month long contract & we got a few days to poke around after we finished up the job & so we rented a car & off we went. Wound up in a hostel that was friendly to foreign travelers & in the bathroom there was a toilet with a little add on bidet attachment. It was early in the morning in March, the bidet was just attached to the fill line of the toilet, it WASN"T a Toto Washlet, & I’ll never forget my first experience with a bidet.
In regards to Cecil’s comment that the health effects are a mixed bag. What?
If all the evidence needed to say it’s a “mixed bag” is one old person burning their anus with boiling hot water out of the billions of people who use this technique everyday without injury… well, that’s inane. Statistics won’t save you from the obvious - toilet paper creation and use is unnecessary and just as harmful to the environment as paper towels. Convenience and privilege is exactly how we got into this polluted mess. Some people are fascinated with the statistics, and like to argue over them. The simple fact is using water is less harmful for the environment. Stop procrastinating and get a plastic pitcher. Set it on top of the tank; there is your bidet. Very simple. Stop looking for ways to complicate things. Clean your hands with a brush and soap. You should do this anyway. Toilet paper is another of those American inventions to complicate life and create money where there was none to be found, the environmental impact was never considered. All of these conveniences were probably harmless at one point, but scale their use up and you have a disaster.
If you don’t like the pitcher get a hand held bidet $50.
Yeah, that article was a freakin’ mess. The number of rolls, the number of trees, measuring energy in terawatts… (Was that supposed to be terawatt-hours? Terajoules? Who knows?) Sheesh… If this had been the first SD article I’d read, it would have been the last.