The number of toilet paper rolls produced from a single tree will vary depending on the size of the tree, the type of tree, and the manufacturing process. According to ‘World Atlas’, an average sized pine tree can produce approximately 1500 rolls of toilet paper.
Industry experts say one tree can make about 100 pounds of toilet paper, with each roll weighing roughly 0.5 pounds. To calculate how many rolls a tree can produce, mathematicians often consider the wood's volume. 'Utopia Mechanicus' indicate that a cubic foot of wood can yield 40 to 80 rolls, but several factors affect this. Drying wood reduces its weight, with a 20% moisture reduction leading to a 50% weight decrease. Different tree types also yield wood of varying mass. Overall, it's tricky to predict the exact number of rolls a tree can make due to these variables. For instance, a 40-foot-tall pine tree, if perfectly conical, with a 1.5-foot diameter at the base, might produce around 1,440 rolls. But real trees usually have more irregular shapes.
It is also important to note that different brands offer a varied number of sheets, plies, and thickness, so this would also need to be accounted for when considering how many toilet rolls are produced per tree. Our extra-long bamboo toilet rolls for example have 30 metres of 3-ply sheets per roll – longer than the supermarket average! Big-name tree-based toilet paper brands are particularly tight-fisted when it comes to the number of sheets/metres they provide, and so we always recommend comparing toilet rolls on a price per metre or sheets basis - and don't forget about the plies! :)
Photo credit: Lukasz Szmigiel @ Unsplash
