Toilet Paper
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Toilet paper is a tissue paper product designed for cleaning after defecation or urination.
Contents |
Design
Designing toilet paper is not an easy task. Modern toilet papers vary in many technical aspects like size, weight, roughness, tearability, softness, chemical residues, "finger-breakthrough" resistance, water-absorption, etc. This is because manufacturers must differentiate their products in order to compete in a crowded market, attract new customers and hold onto existing ones. Due to the heavy competition between large toilet paper companies, the design process as well as the composition and salaries of design teams are carefully guarded industrial secrets. Every team consists of several chemists, engineers, and product/market analysts, in addition to graphic designers and medical experts. They all work together on all details of the product. The salaries of design teams are generally confidential, but a chemist-analyst at Neenah Research Center earns around US$38,000. Toilet paper design team members probably have similar wages.
It is also a common practice to cooperate with external institutions. The Kimberly-Clark site states:
Our partners include universities and research laboratories, technology startups, health care companies, manufacturers, and other consumer packaged goods companies as well as external brokers who can extend our reach and tap into a broad spectrum of inventors. We work together to create a sustainable pipeline of breakthrough solutions through licensing and development agreements, technology acquisition, joint ventures, and co-distribution and co-branding arrangements.
As a mature industry, there is little room for innovation in toilet paper production, so the main goal of design teams is to use science to create useful and saleable products than to achieve major breakthroughs, to produce incremental improvements rather than revolutionary advances. As Frank Murray, vice president of product development for Georgia-Pacific says: "We do very little fundamental research. Technology is the application of science to industrial arts."
Design process
Almost all large companies start the design process by preparing several detailed market surveys to determine which sectors demand specific technical qualities. Based on these polls, analysts prepare a "vision" of a new product. Then chemists and engineers try to create paper as close to their specifications as possible. During the process, they perform tests with various paper pulp compositions, different chemicals, texture types, number of plies or even such things as types of embossing.
Of course, the design team also considers other things besides customer expectations. The designers test how fast the toilet paper will disintegrate when wet in order to keep drain pipes clear. They develop more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes to reduce the water pollution caused by the chemicals used during those processes. As almost all today's “luxury” toilet papers are perfumed, colored, medicated with anti bacterial chemicals, and/or treated with various lotions, medical experts become a necessary part of the design team. They have to determine if such additives are safe for customers: for example, whether they might cause allergies or other health problems.
At the same time, graphic designers must create a packaging design that will distinguish the final product from the competition. While every large company has its own distinctive packaging features, like a golden retriever puppy, which appears on every Cottonelle product, graphic designers much thought also goes into the overall perusal experience. They need to create a package that is distinct, easy-to-read, and attractive—that will most effectively compel shoppers to make a purchase.
Design teams
Design teams usually work in laboratories belonging to their mother companies or in the actual manufacturing facilities. Work conditions as well as the details of the design process are jealously-guarded secrets. Companies in the industry are acutely aware of what is at stake: the toilet paper market is worth about $2.4 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Although almost all the major players have centers where visitors can learn how the paper is made, these places have nothing to do with the real laboratories, where no outsiders are allowed. To prevent competitors from discovering secrets of the research facilities, even the names of their workers are kept confidential.
Raw Materials and parts
The main raw material for toilet paper is wood. Toilet paper is usually made from virgin wood fibers and consists of approximately 70% hardwood, like gum, maple or oak, and 30% softwood, like pine or fir. Hardwood, which has shorter fibers, gives paper its softness, while softwood, which has long fibers, makes the paper stronger.
Other materials used in the manufacturing process include:
- water
- chemicals (caustic sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide) needed for breaking down the wood into usable fiber during the Kraft process
- and chlorine-based bleaches (chlorine dioxide).
In the case of toilet paper made from recycled products, instead of chlorine dioxide, manufacturers usually use oxygen, ozone, sodium hydroxide, or peroxide to whiten the paper.
Logging
Wood used for toilet paper production comes from old growth forests and tree plantations around the world. In 2000, the leading producers of toilet paper were the United States, closely followed by Japan and China. While American and Chinese manufacturers use mainly local wood, Japanese companies have to buy their wood pulp overseas. Although almost all companies claim that they do everything they can to preserve forests, they actually consume enormous amounts of trees for their products. It is estimated that the European market, which constitutes of only 26% of the worldwide demand for toilet paper, uses as many as 25 million trees every year.
Trees are cut down using chainsaws, harvesters and feller bunchers. After being cut down, the limbs are removed and the trunks are cut into logs of optimal length (24 ft. in the U.S.) Then the wood is moved from the stump area to a landing by either ground vehicles or special cable systems. Logs are then transported to a sawmill using trucks, which can carry up to 25,000 kg.
The waste materials, such as the limbs, twigs, and brush, are either burned or left intact so that they may become shelter for wild animals.
Lumber prices vary depending on the country and the type of lumber. For example, in 2001 the price of pine timber in the United States was $410/MBF and oak timber cost $460/MBF. MBF stands for 1000 board feet.
The work of lumberjacks is hard, risky, and poorly paid. They often work in poor weather and in a hurry, operating heavy and dangerous equipment. In 2004, there were 85 recorded fatalities among loggers in the United States. This is over 22 times more than the national average for various jobs. In the United States, lumberjacks earn about $29,700 annually, but in many other countries they work for minimum wage.
Manufacture
Facilities
Large companies usually have their factories in many countries. For example, Kimberly-Clark has 42 operational facilities in 42 countries. Such diversity lowers the costs of acquiring wood pulp as well as shipping costs, not to mention the fact that more and more companies open their facilities in countries where low wages allow them to make more profit.
Modern manufacturing facilities are no different than other large factories. For example, the Broadway Facility in Green Bay, which belongs to Georgia-Pacific, is 5 million sq. ft. on 264 acres and holds 1,746 employees. Another one, the Day Street Facility, is 1.2 million sq. ft on 113 acres and has 658 employees. Georgia-Pacific's mill in Camas, Washington has 1000 employees and the mill site encompasses 660 acres. Such facilities produce not only toilet paper but also similar products such as paper towels and napkins.
Workers’ wages in such facilities vary depending on the country. For example, in Wisconsin, papermakers earn on average $34,520 annually - about 24 percent more than the manufacturing sector's average and about 60 percent more than the average wage for the state as a whole. In many countries in Eastern Europe, those same positions receive wages only a bit higher than minimum wage – for example, in Poland the average papermaker's salary as of 2006 is around US$4,392 annually.
Manufacturing process
Logs that arrive at the mill are debarked in a debarking drum and then chipped into pieces of 1 in x 1/4 in. The bark is collected and burned as fuel in power boilers. In large mills, each batch of wood chips (weighing approximately 50 tons) is mixed with 10,000 gallons of chemicals in a digester – a 60-ft tall pressure cooker. The cooking process takes approximately 3 hours. After that, the mixture is reduced to about 25 tons of cellulose fibers, lignin and other substances, from which about 15 tons of pulp can be extracted.
The pulp goes through a multistage washer system to remove most of the lignin and chemicals. Then the pulp goes to a bleach plant where its yellow color, caused by the presence of the residual lignin which binds fibers together, is removed during a multistage chemical process. About 95% of the cooking chemicals are recovered and reused, so they pose no major threat to the environment.
Toilet paper consists of wood pulp made from both hardwoods and softwoods, but these two types are processed separately and mixed only after bleaching.
Pulp prices vary depending on the country. In 2006, the price hardwood pulp in China was US$590/tonne. In the US it was US$655, and $620/tonne in Europe. The price of softwood in China was $570-$590/tonne, while in Europe it cost $650-$660/tonne and in the United States about $690/tonne.
Mixed pulp is then combined with water and various agents like perfumes, dyes, and/or lotions (depending on the final product use and decisions of the design team) to create a mixture consisting of 99.5% water and 0.5% fiber. The mixture is then sprayed between moving mesh screens in order to drain the water. Modern paper-making machines can produce up to 6,500 ft of an 18-ft wide sheet of matted fiber per minute.
The mat then goes to a Yankee Dryer – a huge heated cylinder which presses and dries the paper to give it its final moisture content of approximately 5%. After drying, the toilet paper is creped by a metal blade which makes it more flexible, but also lowers its strength and density, so it can easily dissolve when wet. The paper is then wound on jumbo reels (weighing as much as five tons) and sent through converting machines that unwind, slit, and rewind it onto long thin cardboard tubing, making paper logs which are then cut into rolls.
Modern Yankee Dryers are up to 12 meters wide and 300 meters long and can produce up to 1000 tons of paper per day at the speed of over a mile per a minute. There is 1 Yankee Dryer in the world for every 1,000,000 toilet-paper consumers.
Recycled toilet paper
Rising pulp prices together with environmental concerns have prompted many manufacturers to turn to making recycled toilet paper. They use both colored and white stock which is combined with hot water and detergents in a huge vat and turned into a liquid slurry. Such pulp is then screened and rinsed to remove coating and inks. It is also whitened and sanitized, using oxygen-based products like peroxide. After that, the pulp is mixed with water. The rest of the process is similar to premium toilet paper manufacturing.
Quality control
In all the larger toilet paper companies, quality control is considered one if not the most important issue. All steps in the manufacturing process are monitored, especially temperature and pressure during cooking. Also, all the chemicals used in the pulping process are tested. The final product is usually checked for its quality by testing whether its color, moisture content, smoothness, and stretching factor meet design specifications.
Distribution, marketing, and disposal
Size and packaging
Industrial rolls of toilet paper generally have either 1,000 sheets per roll of one-ply, or 500 per two-ply roll. Jumbo size rolls are also available in some markets that may have up to 2,000 sheets. Recently, manufacturers have started making jumbo size rolls with over 2,000 sheets. Retail consumer rolls vary in size. Some of them may have only 200 sheets. The standard size for a toilet-paper sheet is 4.5" x 4.5", but it may vary from one manufacturer to another. Toilet paper is usually wrapped in plastic bags or paper. Typical packaging consists of 4, 6, 12, 20 or even 24 rolls of toilet paper for the retail market and up to 96 rolls for industrial size cases.
Packaged toilet paper is stored in a company's warehouse and then is distributed to market by truck or train. Although the weight of toilet paper is almost insignificant (one roll weights about 227 grams, including the core cardboard tube), its size and shape cause the transport cost to be relatively high. This is why even large companies would rather build a new facility in a given country than ship their products there.
Marketing
A company's salespeople often visit supermarkets and try to get more shelf space and a prominent shelf position for its products. They also check to see that the product is being sold at the correct price. Such monitoring is difficult in the case of small stores that buy toilet paper from wholesalers.
Large companies spend enormous amounts of money on advertising. For example, in 1998, Kimberly-Clark spent $100 million to promote its new paper, which featured a rippled texture. About $20 - 30 million went toward a national television advertising campaign, including 18 weeks of prime-time TV commercials. A million single rolls were available in stores for 50 cents each in the Eastern US. They also gave away samples door-to-door.
According to a survey done by the Charmin brand, consumers use on average 8.6 sheets per trip to the toilet. This amounts to 57 sheets per day, and an annual total of 20,805 sheets per person (almost 100 rolls). The lesson being that even a small advantage over competitors can yield significant profits.
Manufacturing cost
The total cost to manufacture one roll of toilet paper varies depending on its type and the country. The cheapest is the harsh gray toilet paper usually made mostly from recycled materials, and the most expensive one is the pre-moistured one, made of 100% wood fiber pulp. Prices vary between countries: for example, luxury toilet paper in the United States costs approximately $0.80 per roll, while the cheapest toilet paper in the European Union costs only $0.10 a roll.
"As of November of 1999, the Kimberly-Clark brands came in second place in the Bathroom Tissue market producing 24% of the $4.2 billion. Their Kleenex-Cottonelle brand represented 50% of that total, and their Scott brand came in second place, accounting for the remainder. Charmin is the number one manufacturer, dominating the market at 30%!" (from Tolietpaperworld.com)
Waste products
Toilet paper dissolves easily when wet, but the chlorine dioxide used to bleach the paper represents serious environmental hazards. This is why manufacturers carefully assess their effluvia to counteract the emission of dioxins. They also try to use oxygen, peroxide, and sodium hydroxide instead of chlorine.
Works cited
Design
http://www.euromonitor.com/Japanese_design_could_promote_growth_in_Western_toilet_tissue.
http://www.answers.com/topic/toilet-paper
http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/funfacts.htm
http://www.kimberly-clark.com/aboutus/innovating_with_kc.aspx
Raw materials and parts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
http://www.wipapercouncil.org/industry.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/toilet-paper
http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/funfacts.htm
http://msucares.com/forestry/prices/reports/2001/tprseptoct01.pdf
Manufacture
http://www.gp.com/greenbay/facts.html
http://www.wipapercouncil.org/industry.htm
http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/funfacts.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/toilet-paper
http://www.kimberly-clark.com/
http://www.cleanlink.com/sm/article.asp?id=1300
http://www.pulpandpaper.net/NetLetter/Features/04192006.asp
Distribution, Marketing, and Disposal
http://www.kimberly-clark.com/
http://www.euromonitor.com/Domestic_and_export_potential_in_Polands_disposable_paper_market
http://www.answers.com/topic/toilet-paper
http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/manufacturers.htm
