Toilet paper facts

Sustainability is a top priority in many places these days. However, there is one particular place where the issue is often neglected. Our behavior in the bathroom, and especially our consumption of toilet paper, is anything but sustainable. Germany leads the way in Europe in this respect, with toilet paper consumption here significantly higher than in France or Italy. However, this is by no means due to a different understanding of hygiene, but to the fact that bidets are much more widespread in these countries. So could cleaning with water be a sustainable way to protect the climate? And how high is toilet paper consumption in Germany exactly?

Toilet paper usage in Germany in minutes

Germans use around 12 kilograms of toilet paper per capita per year. That's a figure that sounds like a lot, but it's hard to visualize. How many sheets is that per minute, for example? How much paper is consumed as a result, and how can this be illustrated?

21,221

Paper rolls per minute

1,909

Kilogram per minute

394,711

Kilometers per minute

3.6

Soccer fields per minute

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

Shower toilets are an alternative to toilet paper. More practical than bidets, they combine toilet and cleaning functions. Once you've tried Duravit's SensoWash® range, you'll never want to be without it again. Easy and pleasant to use, shower toilets offer many advantages:

more hygienic than using toilet paper due to water purification
conserves resources from toilet paper production
comfort thanks to additional features such as a warm air dryer and heated seats

If everyone in Germany switched: resources saved through shower toilets

6,579

Euro per minute

95,495

Liters of water per minute

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 toilet paper should be hung is hotly debated and even has a name in the US.

The Tokyo Toilet

In Tokyo, there is an entire project dedicated to the design of public toilets by star designers.

Since 1975

The installation of a bidet is required by law in Portugal and Italy.

Shower toilets in Japan

are more conspicuous than German models: many play Mendelssohn's Spring Song, for example, to relax the buttocks.

90%

Most bathrooms in Italy have a bidet.

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

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