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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

Those numbers sound insane to me. This is almost half a roll per day, for a single person?

Can any average american or german person comment on how this actually works? Do you wipe like 15 times per visit, or is it just a very high amount (folded?) of sheets per wipe?

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They assume a roll ways 90g, and just compute from that. It's a silly measurement that means nothing.

That's only about 50% more than Japan uses, and that's a country that's the most famous user of bidets.

It comes down to how a roll is calculated. See in the US 1 material roll is not the same as 1 computed roll. In the Toilet Paper isle you see products listing their 8 roles are equillivent to 36 rolls from the other guy. So when you use 1/16 of your roll, you are really using 1/2 a roll

The average is probably calculated as total toilet paper used / US population.

This doesn't mean than the average American uses that much paper. I believe it just means a lot of it is wasted (probably just thrown away without even using it) unsure why though

If TP gets wet, even slightly, it's unusable. Since it's designed to disintegrate upon contact with water.

Not costco's

German here. What I understand is that we Germans use the folding technique instead of crumbling the paper. And we love our sweet 4 layered paper so everything is super soft down there. I can say growing up the first years of my life in the GDR with literal recycled paper as toilet paper, that I wouldn’t go back to that. But I see especially with kids etc that we overuse toilet paper. But I can only speak for my family. Toilet paper usage etc isn’t a dinner conversation topic.

I just spent fifteen minutes to corroborate the numbers for Germany, and they appear to be a vague guess by Statista.

There don't appear to be any reliable stats or studies, which I find surprising; the few studies I could find had people use way less tp, eg https://www.radiohamburg.de/aktuelles/hamburg/Wie-scht-Hambu...

So I'm inclined to believe the 134 is hogwash; no idea if the numbers for the US are more reliable.

My guess is it's absurdly bimodal. A former roommate's girlfriend managed to use an entire roll every time she visited (which was only a few hours). Everyone else I've lived with takes like a week to get through one.

Janitor comes around after business hours and changes any/every roll that isn't damn near full.

Best janitor I've experienced would replace low rolls with new and then set the low roll on top of the dispenser. Of course, the dispenser was the correct shape to allow for that

Around here, public toilets have roll holders containing 2 rolls. 2nd is unreachable, but when the 1st is empty, it falls out and 2nd drops in its place. Janitors just fill the 2nd roll if missing.

I am hoping this is normal around the world and nobody throws away slightly used rolls.

Some people unroll huge wads of paper.

Other folks talking about how rolls are measured, but I have family members who I can’t help but notice when they come to visit use an absurd amount of toilet paper. I think that, rather than using a square or two, they just pull off a bunch and wad it up.

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