Why are Ice cream napkins thin and hardly absorbent?

Unfortunately, this is not the case everywhere. You probably know this too - you order an ice cream cone with two or three scoops, get a tiny little napkin to go with it and off you go... The ice cream drips onto your fingers and smears on your face. If anything, the tiny scrap of napkin makes things worse because the absorbency is nil.

According to Annalisa Carnio of the Union of Italian Ice Cream Producers (Uniteis e.V.), the thin cellulose and vellum paper napkins are used in ice cream parlours for two reasons:
1) Hygiene - ice cream sellers do not have to touch the wafers with their bare hands.
2) The manageable size of the napkins means that not much paper is wasted.

But why are these tiny ice cream napkins also available with ice cream cups? The hygiene reason is clearly omitted here. Annalisa Carnio explains that many ice cream parlours only order one type of napkin. And they use them for the ice cream cones sold outside the shop and for the ice cream cup at the table.