Ask AI Mark explores the water cost of making toilet paper, from pulp production to the finished roll. The conversation covers global water scarcity through examples like Cape Town and California droughts, showing how everyday products drain resources most people never think about.
We use a ton of water to actually make toilet paper, right? So not only are we affecting trees, but we're affecting our scarce water resources. I mean, only about 5% of the world's water is fresh water. 1% of that is in Lake Baikal controlled by Putin, at least 4% for the rest of us. And we are using a ton of it for growing food for animals through industrial agriculture, which I've talked a lot about. And water scarcity is a big deal. There's a half a billion people. every year that suffer all year long from water scarcity. And there's 2 billion people that suffer periodically throughout the year from water scarcity. Recently, Cape Town, which is a modern industrial Western city in South Africa, almost had a complete shutdown because they almost ran out of water and literally they saved the last minute by some rain. But they were literally on water rationing. California had a massive drought. So we're seeing real water scarcity issues. How does this help? solve that problem?
Well, so the average toilet paper roll requires 37 gallons of water just to press down one single roll. And the average American uses an average of 57 sheets of toilet paper per day or a roll and a half of toilet paper per week. I mean, it is an unbelievable amount.
