Toilet Paper Facts

Sustainability is a top priority in many places these days. Yet there is one very specific place where the issue is often still overlooked. That’s because our behavior in the bathroom—and especially our use of toilet paper—is anything but sustainable. Germany leads Europe in this regard; toilet paper usage here is still significantly higher than in France or Italy. However, this is by no means due to a different understanding of hygiene, but rather to the fact that bidets are much more common in those countries. So could cleaning with water actually help protect the climate? And just how high is toilet paper consumption in Germany, exactly?

Toilet paper usage in Germany in minutes

About 12 kilograms per person per year—that’s how much toilet paper Germans use. It sounds like a lot, but it’s hard to visualize. How many sheets is that per minute, for example? How much paper does that amount to, and how can we picture it?

21,221

Rolls of paper per minute

1,909

kilograms per minute

394,711

kilometers per minute

3.6

Soccer fields per minute

Sensowash Shade

Once you've experienced SensoWash®, you'll never want to be without it again

Shower toilets offer an alternative to using toilet paper. More practical than bidets, they combine the functions of a toilet and a bidet. Once you’ve tried Duravit’s SensoWash® series, you’ll never want to go back. Easy and pleasant to use, shower toilets offer many advantages:

  • More hygienic than using toilet paper
  • conserves resources used in the production of toilet paper
  • Comfort thanks to additional features such as a heated air blower and heated seats

If everyone in Germany switched over: resources saved by shower toilets

6,579

euros per minute

95,495

liters of water per minute

14

kilograms of CO₂ per minute

106

Trees per minute

Shower toilets - Then and Now

"The Great Toilet Paper Roll Debate"

The question of which way to hang toilet paper is a hotly debated topic and even has a name in the U.S.

The Tokyo Toilet

In Tokyo, there is an entire project dedicated to having public toilets designed by star designers.

Since 1975

In Portugal and Italy, the installation of a bidet is required by law.

Shower toilets in Japan

are more eye-catching than German models: Many, for example, play Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” to relax their buttocks.

90%

Most bathrooms in Italy have a bidet.

In Japan, sales of shower toilets rose slowly at first, then rapidly:

Introduced in 1980, only 10% of households had a shower toilet by 1990. By 2002, however, that figure had risen to 50%—which was more than the number of households with computers at the time. Today, the figure stands at over 80%.

Design

Wellbeing

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