Toilet Paper Prices Soar As Companies Shrink Roll Sizes

The price of toilet paper has soared as producers shrink the size of rolls to increase revenue amid surging costs, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Procter & Gamble removed sheets from its “Super Mega” and “Mega” toilet paper rolls, decreasing the number of sheets to 366 from 396 and 244 from 264, respectively, according to the advocacy group Consumer World. A single roll of Charmin toilet paper has reportedly shrunk 90% over the last 60 years.

The smaller toilet paper rolls “amounts to losing the equivalent of about a roll and a half in the new 18-count package,” Edgar Dworsky, editor of Consumer World and former assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, told the New York Post.

Dworsky did not track the specific price of toilet paper throughout the country, but he told the NYP that when products themselves shrink, consumers usually pay more.

“Raising prices is a euphemism for shrinking the product,” Dworsky told the NYP. “If a company can shrink the package and charge the same price, that in essence is a price increase to the consumer who has to buy the product more often.”

Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble increased the prices of various goods in 2021 to offset growing production costs, labor issues and supply chain bottlenecks. The company continued to hike prices at the end of February, and it intends to announce additional cost increases in April, the NYP reported.