U.S. Paper Towel Waste: Testing the Bounds of Google Search

There's a TED talk by Joe Smith about using paper towels properly. He claims some numbers on paper towel usage and waste. I'm going to see if I can get something close with Google and estimations. It'll go something like this

1. How much do we consume per year (for comparison against his number)?
2. How much of that is unnecessary use?

Now for getting some estimates for these values. Digging around the internet, you'll find things like this dug from netdryers.com:

According to Tissue World magazine’s April/May 2012 edition,

 the US Tissue Market is a $16B market of which 37% is AFH (Away From Home).

Tissue World magazine. 'Nuff said.

I'm taking a crack at (2) first. Fortunately, consultants exist. RISI, an information provider for the foresting industry, produced this chart:

RISI, through this chart, claims that North America uses 26.5% of 31.8 million tonnes, or ~70 billion pounds of tissue per year. North America tissue use is then 18.58 billion pounds. Tissues is a broad category that includes bathroom tissue, hand tissues, paper towels, sanitary towels and so on. A report from RISI exists free of charge on the internet (probably because it's from 2008 and we all know the paper towel industry is cutthroat and if you don't keep current with supply/demand statistics, you'll get wiped up by the competition), and claims that in 2008, 36% of the tissue market consists of "toweling", which I assume is the category I'm looking for. Perhaps the most obscure Googling I've ever done followed: historical toweling consumption,

which gives results about what would be expected. I have work in a few hours so I'm going to be lazy and assume that there isn't much shift in end-use percentages of tissues from 2008-2013 in the US. I would worry about this if the developing world was involved because I'd assume as per capita wealth in the developing world and namely China increases, the percentage of paper towels used would increase since paper towels feel like the most discretionary version of tissue that I use.

So, we have total US tissue consumption in 2012 and an estimate for how much of that consumption is in towels. 36% of 18.58 billion pounds is 6.689 billion pounds of tissue used per year.

I'm wiped out and you've absorbed all you can about paper towels today, even if I've quilted the readily ply-able information elegantly (which I haven't).

Next step is to haggle with the severity of all you peoples waste.