In case you haven’t heard, the coronavirus outbreak has created a black market for toilet paper and hand sanitiser in Australia due to everyone panic-buying every roll of TP and cleaner they can get their (bacteria-free) hands on.
With everyone in Australia hoarding enough toilet paper to last well beyond the coronavirus and into the next apocalypse, the GOAT team got wondering about one little thing that’s come out of this panic-buying spree: how long will this massive toilet paper stockpile last?
Speaking of the coronavirus panic, the GOAT team talk about the biggest talking points about the disease on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Questioning how long your coronavirus toilet paper stash will last is a pretty valid question given how supplies have taken a massive hit due to masses of panicked Australians. And so to answer that, I bring you another edition of Grim Maths.
Now there are a few assumptions we need to make before we go calculating how long an average Aussie’s coronavirus toilet paper stockpile will last.
Firstly, we need to work out our daily average toilet paper usage. This is a tough metric to figure out since everyone is different but according to some stats on toilet paper usage in Australia, we use an average of 8 or 9 sheets per trip and an average of 57 sheets per day. Taking into account how the differing amounts used between men, women, and children, we’ll go with this usage number as it’s about as accurate as we’re going to get.
Next we need to figure out how many sheets there are in a roll of toilet paper, which is tough considering people use either 1 ply, 2 ply or 3 ply rolls and they all vary in sheet number per roll. To get around this, we’re going to assume everyone uses 3 ply rolls because using any other thickness is just blasphemy.
To account for the differing toilet paper thicknesses, we looked up all the types of TP available at Woolworths and Coles and adjusted everything that’s not 3 ply to a 3 ply equivalent. For example, a 360 sheets of 2 ply toilet paper will equate to 180 sheets of 3 ply TP, and 1,000 sheets of 1 ply will equate to 333 sheets of 3 ply.
As for the differing number of sheets on a roll of 3 ply toilet paper, we simply took an average of the brands on sale, which comes to 203 sheets per roll.
Finally, we need to figure out just how much toilet paper people have been panic-buying per trip. This one is tough because it can range from anywhere between one pack of eight (like myself) to something like this:
Since Woolies has implemented a toilet paper buying limit of 4 packs per per person, we’ll assume that people across Australia bought an average of 6 packs to account for those who hoarded the stuff before limits were brought in. To keep things simple, we’ll also assume each pack contains 12 rolls of TP.
Now, we need to work out how many sheets of toilet paper there are in this coronavirus stash. With 6 packs of 12 rolls and 203 sheets per roll, this gives us a total of 14,616 sheets. That’s a lot.
At an average usage of 57 sheets a day, your coronavirus toilet paper stash will last a total of… 256 days.
Now keep in mind that this number only applies for a family of one person and doesn’t take into account emergencies, illnesses and large parties, all of which will eat into that 256 day total. Keep in mind that this is in no way rooted in science and the margin of error is almost certainly off the scale. Hell all of this wouldn’t have even happened had Aussie everywhere not driven themselves over an unnecessary panic over something that’s been well contained (so far) but here we are.
So in conclusion, all those people in Australia who went on a toilet panic-buying spree due to unwarranted panic over the coronavirus won’t have to worry about running out of wiping material for a few months at the very least.
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