Toilet Paper & Paper Towels - Why People Buy These Paper Products & Dispensers

Research has shown that the use of toilet paper and paper towels in restrooms is the best option for good personal hygiene. Today, there are more choices than ever before when it comes to restroom paper products and dispensers. This article lists ten key factors with supporting rationale for the choices people make when buying toilet paper and paper towels.

1) Environmentally friendly - Purchasing paper products made from post-consumer recycled material is becoming a very popular choice.

• Buying recycled products is the best option considering the extreme alternative is either the complete deforestation of the world's forest or the complete ban on toilet paper and paper towels favored by environmentalist.
• Studies show that the use of recycled paper towels versus warm air dryers can actually reduces the bacteria left on hands by up to 254 percent while still saving our forest.

2) Availability - Universal dispensers for either folded or rolled paper products may be the better choice.

• Many manufacturers sell proprietary dispensers with special features. Once installed, these proprietary dispensers force the facility to buy only the manufacturer's paper products.
• Paper products and dispensers that are designed to universal standards for size and application can avoid the potential shortages when a proprietary product changes, goes out of production or has unexpected supply chain shortages.

3) Waste - The following product choices can cause increased waste.

• Folded towels generate more waste than roll towels because users tend to grab more than needed and rarely unfold them to maximize use.
• Toilet paper that is less expensive (narrow, small sheet size, single ply) often forces greater use than necessary per application.
• Single roll toilet dispensers can result in waste when partially used rolls are discarded during routine service.

4) Quality - Because of the low profit margins in this industry, the old saying "you get what you pay for" is very true.

• Users care about toilet tissue more than all other janitorial products in a facility. They often complain about paper products which are too thin or too rough.
• Lower quality paper products and dispensers can send the wrong message about the facility to the ultimate users/customers.
• Poor quality paper tends to lead to over use. People use more of the product to compensate for the poor quality, which leads to more waste.

5) Quantity - The most popular restroom paper product is the jumbo roll.

• The last thing people want is to find themselves in a restroom without toilet paper.
• Running out of toilet paper is also a concern for janitor. Too little can mean an angry customer creating a real mess.
• The use of jumbo rolls reduces the time spent changing paper, allowing the janitor more time to do other restroom clean-up task.

6) Cost - Both product cost and maintenance cost can lead to the final choice of the paper products and dispensers to be used.

• The possibilities for waste described earlier in this article must be factored into overall cost.
• Folded towels (single-fold, center-fold, or multi-fold) are more portable than rolled towels. Some people may take these folded products for use at home, adding cost for the organization paying for them.
• Single roll toilet paper dispenser often requires an extra roll of paper to be left in the room. The extra paper roll can become a free gift to some users willing to take it for their own personal use.
• The janitorial labor to fill folded towel dispensers is often greater than the labor to fill roll towel dispensers.
• Retrofit cost to change the dispensers for an entire facility can be very costly.

7) Traffic - The frequency of restroom use is an obvious consideration.

• Private offices with limited users can be treated more like a home bathroom.
• Public facilities serving all users that may pass through the area should have a duty cycle study done to aid the final choice of paper products and dispensers.

8) Volume - In addition to the traffic consideration above, the potential number of users at the same time and the desire to avoid lines must be considered.

• Public restrooms near sporting events, theaters, train stations, etc where large volumes of users may often enter at the same time should be capable of handling the peak volumes.
• While time delays on paper dispensers make sense for reducing paper waste, these time delays may not make the best sense at peak volumes.
• Dual roll and/or jumbo roll toilet paper dispensers can help to prevent running out of paper during a single event.

9) Sanitation - The hands-free paper towel dispenser is quickly becoming a standard for many facilities.

• Hands-free (also called touch-free) paper towel dispensers, both automatic and semi-automatic (operated by forearm contact), have been on the market for quite some time. High maintenance cost is the only thing preventing hands-free dispenser application from expanding more rapidly.
• Caution should be taken not to move too fast in converting to hands-free dispensers. Many facilities have made the switch only to find they had to spend the extra cost to switch back for other reasons.
• Hands-free paper towel dispensers often come with a time delay to prevent waste. However, if a user must stand and wait for another towel, they are likely to walk away with wet hands. Wet hands spread 1000 times more bacteria than dry hands.

10) Aesthetic concerns - When trying to satisfy the many choices, the typical buyer sometimes weighs aesthetics (size, shape, appearance) of the paper products and dispensers disproportionally.

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