Hello there all you fellow stay-at-homers. Welcome to my world, the disability world.
Since I don’t get taken shopping often, I stock up on non-perishables. Things like toilet paper, kleenex, dish soap, canned food, cat litter and the like. So, imagine my surprise when I went shopping to stock up for isolation in early March and not only did I find no TP, but no dish soap, no hand soap, no sanitizer, no canned soup, no rice, and a plethora of other items I expected to purchase for the long haul. There weren’t even ramen noodles on the shelves. Those bare shelves haunt me to this day. I’ve seen video of them happening during crises like hurricanes, but never here even when folks stock up for expected snowstorms.
I haven’t been back to any store since so I rely on periodic food delivery to keep local restaurants alive and kicking. But I do hear that TP is still in short supply so I went to investigate why because I’m going to be in need. Soon.
The answer isn’t “hoarding”. Or because the Charmin bears took it all to cuddle.
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While there might be some panic buying as consumers react to news of a shortage, hoarding isn’t the reason those shelves are empty,
Experts say, even before COVID-19, the whole supply chain of toilet paper was already very efficient. Machines were running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Manufacturers didn’t want a bulky, and not especially profitable, item just sitting around.
“It operates in just-in-time demand for toilet paper because the demand, in the near-term history, has never changed,” says Goldschmidt. “That allows you to hold very little inventory.
The average family of 4 uses 409 rolls per year (it’s actually one of the things the Census measures). Because people are staying home rather than going to work or school, they’re using about 40% more these days. And here, while I can keep quite a distance from people, I’m having a great deal of difficulty staying 6 feet away from my refrigerator. If that’s the same for you, you’re using more TP, too. All that food and liquid intake eventually must depart …. ‘Nuff said.
In other words, it’s due to a natural increase in demand because we’re at home all the time. This means that commercial toilet paper, the kind used in businesses and schools, is abundant because there’s a vast reduction of usage, but consumer TP isn’t.
OK, I know what you’re thinking, but you really can’t really substitute one for the other:
The toilet paper people use at home is softer, sometimes 2- or 3-ply and usually made from virgin fiber. Commercial toilet paper is made mostly from recycled fiber and many of those rolls are so large they wouldn’t fit on home holders.
Add to that the difference in the suppliers and packaging (commercial TP is sold by the pallet rather than pack of 4-24 rolls) and it becomes clear that it’s not easy to just dip into commercial supplies to fulfill the new home demand. They’re working on it, though. For myself, I prefer the cushy, soft consumer TP rather than the public bathroom stuff, but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to use what’s available.
So, that explains why toilet paper is not readily available these days. Suppliers are ramping up production so there should be plenty available soon. I hope that applies to kleenex, too. It’s allergy season (sniff, wheeze, cough, sneeze) …..
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