US Paper Towel Waste: Where do Joe Smiths numbers come from?

In the previous post, I started coming up with figures on US paper towel usage with the end-goal of finding where the numbers used in Joe Smith's TED talk came from. His claim is that 13 billion pounds of paper towels are used in the U.S. each year. My best from Googling gave me a number of around 7 billion, so notably far off and needs straightening out. I'll do that here.

 The RISI estimate for 2012 tissue usage in North America (a blanket term including the different forms of towel and tissue) was around 18 billion pounds, so Joe Smith's number includes about 70% of the total tissue usage in 2012. Working off a 2008 report by RISI,

The North American tissue market is comprised of toilet tissue (45% share of North American consumption), toweling (36%), napkins (12%), facial tissue (6%) and other uses, including sanitary (1%).

 it seems reasonable that he is assuming the lions share of the toweling and toilet tissue market, ie, 45+36= 81%, which gives ~15 billion pounds. Smith's talk was given in 2012, so I'd assume he is using 2011 numbers instead of 2012 numbers. Organic growth could account for some of the discrepancy. A growth from 13 billion to 15 billion year-over-year is a 15% growth, which is too much growth to be reasonable as solely accountable. My guess is that the discrepancy lies in the percentage breakdown of tissue use. My numbers are from 2008, while his could be from more current years. For example, if the 45% toilet tissue and 36% toweling percentages (totaling 81%) changed to 43% and 34% (totaling 77%), 15 billion pounds drops to 14 billion pounds.

I'll assume that a combination of organic growth within the tissue market and shifts in end-use percentages close that gap and the 15 billion pounds in 2012 is probably more like 13-15 billion pounds of "paper towels" used in 2012.