I knew something looked different about it, but it was Mrs. Griz who apparently studied it longer and fi gured it out - our toilet paper is shrinking.
No, it’s not shrinking in the length of individual sheets, and the advertisement still claims as many sheets per roll; but the width of each roll has diminished by about 3/8 of an inch. The extra space on the sides of the roll on our bathroom dispenser gave it away.
Of course, Mrs. Griz had to be sure, so she got out a ruler and noted 3/8 of an inch difference between the old roll and the new.
Just to be sure there had not been other recent smallscale steps of shrinkage in the width of our bathroom tissue, she searched the house for an even older roll and finally sent me out to my pickup truck to see if I had any rolls in there which had been riding around for a year or more.
I searched under the back seat of my truck and found, well, 2 1/2 rolls - one needs to be prepared for any emergency and, when I pretty much lived in a big truck, roadside emergencies did occasionally happen!
I’m sure at least the one partial roll had been under the back seat of my pickup truck for quite some time, probably being transferred there from under the seat or in the trunk of a predecessor vehicle. I didn’t remember it was there and replaced it twice if that says anything about its age.
Careful measurement and comparison indicated noother recent width changes. Since I carried that fi rst roll of toilet tissue to my pickup truck, the only change has been the recent major jump from a width of 4 5/16 inches to 3 and 15/16 inches. That’s a whole 3/8 of an inch less paper.
Figuring up by the square inch, a sheet of the new toilet paper is a good 2 square inches smaller in size than the old. Of course, the rolls I found in my pickup truck weren’t old enough to refl ect the 4.5-inch square sheets which were the original norm for toilet paper. That means we’ve lost 6.8 square inches per sheet of toilet paper since it was originally produced and sold.
Why the smaller-size sheets? The most obvious answer is cost savings for the producer. After all, even newspapers have had to reduce their page size from the full broadsheet of years ago to a narrower page which is easier to handle and read for the consumer.
Giving the consumer less bathroom tissue for his or her bottom and for the same price can increase a company’s bottom line. Perhaps another way to look at it is shrinking the width of the paper will shrink the company’s expense, and less width may mean consumers add a little to their per-use length which results in both shrinking costs per roll and increasing profits for the company.
Of course, when you consider that it takes a tree to produce 100 pounds of toilet paper and the average American uses 50 pounds oftoilet paper per year, cutting 3/8 of an inch off the width could result in a savings of nearly 5 pounds of toilet paper per American per year. In 20 years time, that could save a tree for each U.S. citizen.
Though I hate to say it in relation to toilet paper because it just doesn’t sound good, “going green” could be the reason. Perhaps the companies are really trying to save trees and protect the environment.
Since I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of big government, I might roll out my theory on a new government conspiracy. Since Americans reportedly use 50 percent more toilet paper per person than people in the rest of the world, it could be that our government officials have secretly signed a United Nations treaty to reduce America’s per capita toilet paper usage to that of other nations. And, since freedom loving Americans would throw a fit if the government added to its current restrictions on the amount of water per fl ush a limit on how much toilet paper each American could use per day, it is possible the government is trying to bring us into world toilet tissue compliance by shaving away at the width of our toilet paper rolls to reach the eventual goal of reducing our toilet paper usage by 50 percent or more.
If my theory is right, littleby-little, our rolls of toilet paper will become narrower and narrower until they make it down to about 2.5 inches wide. And once they become that small, it will be a small step for most Americans to just go paperless.
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at rmoll@ nwaonline.com.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 11/27/2013