2918.12.10 美国人对纸巾的痴迷程度很奇怪

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FAMILY
Americans Are Weirdly Obsessed With Paper Towels
Other countries swear by brooms, mops, and sponges. The U.S. prefers something more disposable.

By Joe Pinsker

James Leynse / Corbis / Getty
DECEMBER 10, 2018
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Every day, as Americans dry their hands, soak up their spills, and wipe their counters, they are—whether they know it or not—contributing to their country’s dominance. In an era of waning American exceptionalism, inhabitants can at least pride themselves on an underratedly important, probably shameful distinction: They reside in the paper-towel capital of the world.

This status is unquestioned. According to data shared with me by the market-research firm Euromonitor International, global spending on paper towels for use at home (but not in office or public bathrooms) added up to about $12 billion in 2017, and Americans accounted for about $5.7 billion of that total. In other words, the U.S. spends nearly as much on paper towels as every other country in the world combined.


Read: The privilege of buying 36 rolls of toilet paper at once

No other nation even comes close: France, the runner-up in nationwide spending, only purchased about $635 million worth of paper towels last year, and the U.K., Germany, and Italy rounded out the top five paper-towel-buying countries.

The Top Five Countries by Overall Spending on Paper Towels
Total U.S. dollars spent on paper towels in 2017, in billions


Data: euromonitor international
Of course, the U.S. has the largest population on that list, but it stands apart on a per capita basis as well. In 2017, the average American spent $17.50 on paper towels. The closest competition on this measure comes from Western and northern Europe, led by Norway at $11.70 per person.


The Top Five Countries by Per Capita Spending on Paper Towels
Average U.S. dollars spent on paper towels in 2017, per resident


data: euromonitor international
While Euromonitor doesn’t have data on exactly how many paper towels Americans go through each year, Svetlana Uduslivaia, the company’s head of research, did tell me that Americans lead the world in the usage of “tissue products,” the umbrella category that covers paper towels.

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In explaining the U.S.’s enormous appetite for paper towels, Uduslivaia pointed to America’s relatively wealthy and large population. “A strong economy can support more spending on nonessentials like paper towels and purchases of higher-quality products,” she told me.

But given that other comparably wealthy countries don’t consume nearly as much on a per capita basis, the appeal must go beyond just what people can afford. When I asked Laurie Jennings, the director of the Good Housekeeping Institute, the consumer-testing arm of the Hearst-owned media brand, what she thought of paper towels, she praised them and said they were a standby in her own home. “They are convenient, they are absorbent, they are especially helpful in cleaning messes where something like cross-contamination could be an issue,” she says.

Perhaps the paper towel satisfies some deeper, uniquely American desire to be immediately rid of a problem, whatever the cost. “I definitely think they in many ways represent how Americans think in that people are obsessed with instant gratification,” Jennings told me.

The rest of the world gets by just fine without paper towels. In 2016, Nielsen, another market-research firm, released a report that looked at household-cleaning regimens in more than 60 countries, and it found that the most commonly used tools were brooms, mops, and rags. “Cleaning tools of the trade are as diverse as the regions themselves,” the report concluded, noting the popularity of scrubbing brushes in Latin America, cloth towels in the Middle East, and sponges in Europe.

The report also captures the hold paper towels have on the American household. Observe how much of an outlier North Americans are when Nielsen asked if they use paper towels “regularly,” compared with people from other regions (and consider that no other North American country appeared in Euromonitor’s top five paper-towel-consuming countries):

Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Use Paper Towels “Regularly,” by Region



nielsen
Nielsen suggests there’s a financial story behind these numbers. “Homes with lower relative incomes show greater reliance on reusable tools such as rags and cloths,” the report reads. “Meanwhile, homes with higher relative incomes rely more heavily on disposable options like paper towels.” Basically, Americans use so many paper towels because they can afford to.


They’re not just using them—they’re throwing them away, too. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2015 the country generated about 7.4 billion pounds of waste consisting of paper towels and other “tissue” materials, like toilet paper. “Generally speaking … anything disposable isn’t good for the environment, especially something that is used on a large societal scale,” says Seung-Jin Lee, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan at Flint who has studied the environmental impacts of paper towels. He says that in addition to the water and trees that go into making paper products and the fossil fuels it takes to produce and distribute them, it’s “a significant problem,” environmentally speaking, that so much paper ends up in landfills. (The American Forest & Paper Association, which represents makers of tissue products and other paper manufacturers, did not respond to requests for an interview.)

When I asked Jennings about these environmental impacts, she noted her preferred way to go through fewer paper towels: reuse them. “We’re very much in the mentality of use-and-toss,” she says. “But if you use them once, and you rinse them, they can be used again. They don’t have to be as disposable or as single-use as some people may think they are." She says it’ll be apparent when the paper towel has done all it can, “because the fibers start to break apart from each other.”


While the data I found didn’t cover spending on paper towels in public or office bathrooms, I did come across evidence that they’re worse for the environment than using hand dryers. One study was delightfully robotic in communicating this finding: “Per functional unit, which is to achieve a pair of dried hands, the dispenser product system has a greater life cycle impact than the dryer product system across three of four endpoint impact categories.”

Despite these environmental concerns, many Americans at the end of the day just want to achieve a clean counter, and paper towels will likely remain their go-to: Uduslivaia, of Euromonitor, forecasts that the volume of paper towels Americans consume will stay “more or less steady” in the next several years. (Overall spending might decline a little, though, because of discount stores’ cut-rate pricing and the proliferation of buy-in-bulk warehouse stores such as Costco, which have lower per-roll prices.)

Global spending on paper towels, though, is expected to rise by about 4 percent by the end of 2022. “Growth in developing markets is supported by improved income levels, urbanization, and improving hygiene standards,” Uduslivaia explained. The rest of the world, it seems, is catching up.

Joe Pinsker is a staff writer at The Atlantic.


家庭
美国人对纸巾的痴迷程度很奇怪
其他国家的人发誓要用扫帚、拖把和海绵。美国人则更喜欢一次性的东西。

作者：Joe Pinsker

James Leynse / Corbis / Getty
2018年12月10日

每天，当美国人擦干他们的手，浸泡他们的溢出物，并擦拭他们的柜台时，他们正在--无论他们是否知道--为他们国家的统治地位做出贡献。在一个美国例外主义减弱的时代，居民们至少可以为一个被低估的重要的、可能是可耻的区别感到自豪。他们居住在世界的纸巾之都。

这一地位是毋庸置疑的。根据市场研究公司Euromonitor International与我分享的数据，2017年全球用于家庭（但不包括办公室或公共浴室）的纸巾支出加起来约为120亿美元，美国人占了其中约57亿美元。换句话说，美国在纸巾上的花费几乎相当于世界上所有其他国家的总和。


阅读。一次性购买36卷卫生纸的特权

没有其他国家能与之相比。法国是全国支出的亚军，去年只购买了价值约6.35亿美元的纸巾，英国、德国和意大利位列购买纸巾国家的前五名。

按纸巾总体支出计算的前五个国家
2017年在纸巾上花费的美元总额，以十亿计


数据：欧洲监测机构国际
当然，美国是该名单上人口最多的国家，但它在人均方面也很突出。2017年，美国人平均花费17.5美元购买纸巾。在这个标准上，最接近的竞争者来自西欧和北欧，以挪威为首，人均11.70美元。


按人均纸巾消费计算的前五个国家
2017年每个居民在纸巾上花费的平均美元数


数据：Euromonitor国际
虽然Euromonitor没有关于美国人每年使用多少纸巾的确切数据，但该公司的研究主管Svetlana Uduslivaia告诉我，美国人在 "纸巾产品"（涵盖纸巾的总类）的使用方面领先于世界。

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在解释美国对纸巾的巨大需求时，Uduslivaia指出了美国相对富裕和庞大的人口。"她告诉我："强大的经济可以支持在纸巾等非必需品上的更多支出，以及购买更高质量的产品。

但是，鉴于其他相对富裕的国家的人均消费并不高，其吸引力必须超越人们的承受能力。当我问到赫斯特旗下媒体品牌Good Housekeeping Institute（消费者测试机构）的主管Laurie Jennings对纸巾的看法时，她称赞了纸巾，并说它们是她自己家中的备用产品。"她说："它们很方便，它们有吸收力，在清洁诸如交叉污染等可能成为问题的混乱局面时，它们特别有帮助。

也许纸巾满足了一些更深层次的、美国人特有的愿望，即无论付出什么代价都要立即摆脱问题。"詹宁斯告诉我："我绝对认为它们在许多方面代表了美国人的思维方式，因为人们对即时满足感非常着迷。

世界上其他国家没有纸巾也能过得很好。2016年，另一家市场研究公司尼尔森发布了一份报告，调查了60多个国家的家庭清洁方案，发现最常用的工具是扫帚、拖把和抹布。报告总结说："清洁工具的种类和地区本身一样多，"报告指出，刷子在拉丁美洲很受欢迎，布巾在中东，海绵在欧洲。

该报告还抓住了纸巾在美国家庭中的地位。当尼尔森询问北美人是否 "经常 "使用纸巾时，与其他地区的人相比，观察一下北美人是多么的离群索居（考虑到没有其他北美国家出现在Euromonitor的前五个纸巾消费国）。

各地区表示 "经常 "使用纸巾的受访者百分比



尼尔森
尼尔森认为这些数字背后有一个财务故事。报告说："相对收入较低的家庭更依赖可重复使用的工具，如抹布和布，"报告说。"同时，相对收入较高的家庭更依赖一次性的选择，如纸巾。" 基本上，美国人使用这么多纸巾是因为他们有能力支付。


他们不仅仅是在使用它们，他们也在扔掉它们。根据环境保护局的数据，在2015年，全国产生了大约74亿磅由纸巾和其他 "纸巾 "材料组成的废物，如卫生纸。"一般来说......任何一次性的东西都对环境不利，尤其是在社会上大规模使用的东西，"密歇根大学弗林特分校机械工程助理教授李承仁说，他曾研究过纸巾的环境影响。他说，除了制造纸制品所需的水和树木，以及生产和销售纸制品所需的化石燃料之外，从环境角度讲，这么多的纸最终被填埋，是一个 "重大问题"。(代表纸巾产品制造商和其他纸张制造商的美国森林与纸业协会没有回应采访请求）。

当我向詹宁斯询问这些环境影响时，她指出了她喜欢的减少纸巾的方法：重复使用它们。她说："我们非常重视使用和折腾的心态，"她说。"但如果你使用一次，并冲洗它们，它们就可以再次使用。它们不必像一些人可能认为的那样是一次性的或一次性的"。她说，当纸巾已经完成了它的全部功能时，就会很明显，"因为纤维开始相互断裂"。


虽然我发现的数据并不包括公共或办公室浴室的纸巾消费，但我确实看到了证据，表明它们比使用干手器对环境更有害。有一项研究在传达这一发现时表现出令人愉快的机械性。"每一个功能单位，即实现一双干手，分配器产品系统在四个终端影响类别中的三个方面比干手器产品系统具有更大的生命周期影响。"

尽管有这些环境问题，许多美国人在一天结束时只想实现一个干净的柜台，而纸巾可能仍然是他们的首选。Euromonitor的Uduslivaia预测，美国人消费的纸巾数量在未来几年将保持 "大致稳定"。(但总体支出可能会略有下降，因为折扣店的降价以及像好市多这样的大宗商品仓储店的扩散，其每卷价格较低）。

不过，到2022年底，全球的纸巾支出预计将增加约4%。"Uduslivaia解释说："发展中市场的增长得到了收入水平提高、城市化和卫生标准提高的支持。世界上的其他地方，似乎正在迎头赶上。

Joe Pinsker是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。