What Everyone's Getting Wrong About the Toilet Paper Shortage [View all]

[IronLionZion]

https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

There’s another, entirely logical explanation for why stores have run out of toilet paper — one that has gone oddly overlooked in the vast majority of media coverage. It has nothing to do with psychology and everything to do with supply chains. It helps to explain why stores are still having trouble keeping it in stock, weeks after they started limiting how many a customer could purchase.

In short, the toilet paper industry is split into two, largely separate markets: commercial and consumer. The pandemic has shifted the lion’s share of demand to the latter. People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.

Georgia-Pacific, a leading toilet paper manufacturer based in Atlanta, estimates that the average household will use 40% more toilet paper than usual if all of its members are staying home around the clock. That’s a huge leap in demand for a product whose supply chain is predicated on the assumption that demand is essentially constant. It’s one that won’t fully subside even when people stop hoarding or panic-buying.

If you’re looking for where all the toilet paper went, forget about people’s attics or hall closets. Think instead of all the toilet paper that normally goes to the commercial market — those office buildings, college campuses, Starbucks, and airports that are now either mostly empty or closed. That’s the toilet paper that’s suddenly going unused.

I enjoy reading up on supply chains, economic principles, and how to get stuff where it needs to go. The commercial paper argument definitely makes sense and I'm sure more than a few folks have tried to steal from offices before they disabled badge access for mandatory remote work. There is a ton of hand sanitizer in offices too, for the record. They are the type that goes in the automatic machines that dispense them as well as the giant pumps.

More than a few local restaurants are selling TP and groceries along with takeout. And at least one local nonprofit actually gives out TP in exchange for donations.

I respect that hand sanitizer is being reserved for hospitals and government agencies and anything that makes it to stores is used by the store's employees.