Substituting toilet roll with kitchen roll will damage infrastructure

With a significant amount of people bulk buying products such as toilet roll, it has resulted in others substituting it for kitchen roll; as a result of this, infrastructure companies have highlighted that this could be harmful to the supply chains.

Thames Water has recently warned that people using kitchen roll as a substitute for toilet paper will cause significant damage to the wastewater infrastructure. Furthermore, protective clothing and dust masks are other products people are substituting for face masks, which are designed for the engineering and building industry; therefore, this can affect the safety of their work.

Professor of Supply Chain Strategy, Cranfield School of Management, Richard Wilding, stated: “We are seeing shortages of toilet paper but worryingly also shortages of paper kitchen towels and industrial paper towel used for example, in garages and workshops and other wipe products. If kitchen towels, baby wipes or industrial papers are used as a replacement for toilet paper, our sewage systems could readily become blocked with the resulting chaos and increased health risks associated with this. Ultimately, water companies may not have the infrastructure and equipment to unblock the sewer system. This means builders, tilers and plasterers or other workers who regularly use masks for protection against airborne particulate matter – for instance, – are struggling to get hold of this equipment from certain suppliers. Yet the construction industry relies on this protective equipment for people to carry out their work, as employers, companies can’t expect their staff to continue without it and regulations place a duty of care on every employer to provide the appropriate safety equipment. Without such equipment employees are unable to work and companies are subsequently unable to undertake work. UK companies who supply these sectors are starting to feel the strain on certain protective equipment items and this needs to be monitored very carefully. In this case, the consumer supply of medical face masks is drying up, so customers turn to industry sources. Similarly, the substitution of kitchen towels for toilet paper will have a knock on effect of disrupting the sewage treatment supply chain, causing shortages in their supply chain as a knock on effect and a disrupting a seemingly unrelated industry.”