Americans use far more toilet paper than any other country, perhaps three times as much as their Western European counterparts.
The Yanks like it softer too. Recycled toilet paper doesn't sell in the states like it does in Europe and Latin America [source: Goldenberg ]. Toilet paper is a fixture and it's not going anywhere, except down the sewer pipes, anytime soon. Keep reading and you'll see where it all began for this humble yet vital paper product. It may surprise you to learn that widespread use of toilet paper is a fairly recent thing — less than years old. So, what did people do before that? They used leaves, rocks, sticks, mud, clay, corncobs, snow, or any other objects that could be used for wiping, or ouch scraping.
In ancient Roman times, it was common for people to use a shared stick with a sponge at the tip. Thankfully, between uses, the sponge was soaked in very salty water, which helped to inhibit bacterial growth [source: Wolf ]. Still, toilet paper is not a new invention. As with so many other firsts, it was the Chinese who dreamed up the dandy idea of sweeping away doo-doo with good old paper. And they did so all the way back in the 6th century C.
The Chinese invented paper itself in the 1st century C. We don't know the name of the man who invented toilet paper, but by the 6th century, a court official was opining that, "Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics I dare not use for toilet purposes. Apparently, this Chinese invention of toilet paper never caught on in Europe at the time. Rich people used cloth or hemp to clean themselves. The poor used rags, leaves or their own hands.
The rise in newspaper publishing in the s provided a ready cheap source of paper for taking care of your business. And in the s, Americans commonly used pages from the Old Farmer's Almanac and Sears Roebuck catalogs to clean themselves, although Sears received many complaints once it switched to glossy pages.
The Almanac even had a hole punched in the corner, making it easy to hang in an outhouse [sources: Rodriguez , Dugan ]. It took a very long time for toilet paper to be available for purchase and even longer for people to see a need to buy it. In the s, major energy shortages resulted in virtual panic regarding gasoline.
So, in , when comedian Johnny Carson joked about a potential toilet paper shortage, people took him seriously, buying up all of the local supplies. Carson went on the next night, apologizing for causing a scare, but in some places the shortage continued for weeks [source: Rodriguez ].
It all started with a guy named Joseph Gayetty, an entrepreneur who saw a clean business opening unlike any other.
In the s, he began selling boxed sheets of a hemp-based paper product that was infused with aloe, which he marketed as a hemorrhoid preventer.
He found limited success with his product, called "Gayetty's Medicated Paper" 50 cents for sheets , in large part because people were so used to using the free catalogs. It also didn't help that the subject was taboo — no self-respecting American would ever go to a store and ask for a product meant to wipe poop from their nether regions [source: Wolf ].
Another three decades passed before boxed toilet paper made the revolutionary leap to rolls thanks to Scott Paper, which pioneered the concept in Yet because of the aforementioned cultural poo taboos, the company refused to be associated with the product, leveraging the names of its partners instead. Less than a decade later, another innovation rolled in — perforations, which made it much easier to neatly tear away single sheets instead of ripping apart the roll.
Why is TP perforated in squares that are just 4 inches 10 centimeters long? Well, the product has plenty of uses other than bum wiping, such as lipstick blotting and nose cleaning, which don't require inch-long sheets. Even with the advent of rolls, the paper itself still needed some improvement.
It was coarse and rough, very unlike today's cushy versions. Consider this: Until the s, it was still common practice to market TP as "splinter-free. Early rolled toilet paper was just a single layer, meaning you had to fold it over a few times or risk seriously soiling your hand. In , St. These days, of course, you can find toilet paper in two-ply or even four-ply form.
So, with all the discomfort around the concept of cleansing our bums, how did toilet paper ever roll into the lives of everyday folks? Two words: indoor plumbing. Around the turn of the 20th century, Americans were finally getting consistent access to indoor plumbing and flushing toilets. Suddenly, catalog pages and newspapers weren't feasible options for wiping — and flushing — unless you were cool with clogged toilets.
Enter toilet paper. As you probably know from personal experience, modern toilet paper comes in a wide range of quality and construction, but it's all similar in that it's made to degrade easily in a septic system. Most TP is made from tree pulp, water, and bleach , as well as chemicals that extract fibers, making the paper cushier and less coarse. Manufacturers often use a blend of soft- and hardwood oak, maple or gum trees.
The trees are shredded into chips to make them easier to handle, and then the chips are fed into a big digester, which is essentially a large pressure cooker that breaks the woody material down into wood pulp. Then, the pulp is cleaned and bleached to remove color.
The pulp is mixed with water, and together, the materials create a basic paper stock. The mixture is pressed onto a large screen, which drains off the water, leaving behind a nice white paper product. Large metal blades scrape the paper from the screen, and then the paper is spooled onto rolls.
Finally, a machine cuts the rolls and perforates the paper [source: Industrial Shredders ]. Industrial-grade toilet paper, like the kind found in prisons or your work office, contains more fibers, which equals a coarser texture, and it's almost always thinner, too — so you need more to do the job.
Recycled toilet paper, which makes up only 2 percent of American TP sales, is processed differently. Instead of trees, manufacturers gather together different kinds of used paper. Then, they remove inks and colors from that paper before beginning the creation process. Due to its recycle-paper origins, the end product is not a nice, uniform white color.
It's also made of longer fibers, which as you already know, are coarser and not as comfortable. Regardless of whether it comes from virgin trees or recycled sources, toilet paper has shorter fibers than, say, facial tissues or paper towels.
Those short fibers are the key to making TP more flushable and faster-decomposing than most paper products.
It's a fine line between making the fibers too short, though, because those papers tend to be noticeably flimsier. Even with modern TP's flushable design, in many places, you still can't flush the paper. Instead, it has to be placed into a trash receptacle' because some weaker plumbing systems may clog too easily. Then there's the matter of color. The majority of American toilet paper is plain white. But back in the s, manufacturers churned out rolls in a rainbow of colors, from blue, to yellow, to pink, letting homeowners coordinate all aspects of their bathrooms.
So why isn't toilet paper still offered in pretty hues? Because the dyes used were linked to potential health concerns, such as cervical cancer and inflammation in the nether regions. Suddenly, color coordination seemed much less important than staying healthy. Dyes also slow the decomposition rate of TP, which is a very bad thing, particularly in places with less-than-powerful plumbing.
It's also worth pointing out that dyes add to the expense of manufacturing, which would be passed along to the customer [source: Smallwood ]. The same concept applies to aromatized papers — the scented versions are rare in the U.
However, scented and colored TP is very popular in countries like Mexico and France and presumably these places are not overrun with anal issues [sources: Harwell , LostinFrance ]. Not to mention doesn't bleached white toilet paper have the possibility for bum irritation too? There is a TP controversy that roils the U. Over the centuries, toilet paper has evolved. As a result, the invention of toilet paper was more of an ongoing process than a set date, and its origins are drastically different than our 21st-century soft and fluffy rolls of goodness.
The process began in China and ended with the many sustainable toilet paper alternatives we know and love today. According to National Geographic , the first recognizable form of toilet paper was created for the Chinese imperial family in The imperial toilet tissue was rice-based and presented as a stack of individual, perfumed sheets.
In , Joseph Gayetty developed his own line of aloe-infused hemp toilet paper. Gayetty thought the idea was so ingenious that he had his last name printed on every sheet!
Unfortunately, Americans preferred to wipe with pages out of the — free — Sears Roebuck catalog, so few people bought his toilet paper. Then, around , two brothers, Clarence and Irvin Scott, began to produce toilet paper on a roll. During the s, stores started to sell toilet paper in packs of rolls, and Charmin began marketing toilet paper as a soft commodity. By , Americans had become wholly dependent on the use of toilet paper; however, toilet paper innovation was far from over.
As we reached the 21st century, we started to see sustainable toilet paper options emerge. Chiefly, Reel Paper has changed the game by offering soft and sustainable bamboo toilet paper. Toilet paper may be a household staple, but how many of us have actually questioned what our go-to brand is made of?
Knowing exactly what is in the item we use on our most sensitive areas empowers us to make active, informed decisions, as opposed to simply grabbing whatever brand is on sale.
Traditional toilet paper — as with most paper products — comes from trees. In fact, a company called Northern Tissue announced the first-ever guaranteed splinter-free toilet paper in ! Luckily, modern toilet paper is proudly splinter-free and generally made from one of two materials: virgin or recycled pulp. Virgin pulp comes directly from a tree specifically to make toilet paper.
Recycled pulp, on the other hand, comes from existing paper products; in fact, recycled pulp can potentially have been used many times prior to becoming toilet paper. Luckily, there are other toilet paper options out there. One of the best things you can do for both your behind and the environment is to make the switch to bamboo toilet paper!
The process of producing toilet paper from virgin pulp is unique. First, the makers will cut down the tree, remove its bark, and chip the wood into small pieces. They then pressure cook the wood chips to produce a pulp. Finally, they cut the log into smaller rolls and package them for consumer use.
Unlike the virgin pulp method, the process of making recycled toilet paper begins with dumping a load of recycled paper into a bin filled with warm water. The water is then aerated to remove any ink from the paper, then bleached and sanitized. The manufacturers press and dry the pulp on a large, flat surface and emboss the dried pulp to strengthen it. To make a two-ply roll, they feed the mixture through a machine that glues the sheets together. Many production processes use chlorine bleach to whiten or sanitize pulp.
Some toilet paper even contains the chemical BPA — which evidence suggests may be harmful. We cut down 27, trees every day just to make toilet paper — none of which can be recycled. Many sustainable alternatives use non-tree materials like bamboo or hemp. Our bamboo toilet paper is free of inks and dyes and is completely sustainable from start to finish. Toilet paper comes in all shapes and sizes that vary in length and softness.
According to one MIT student , a standard roll of toilet paper is about 4. The number of sheets per roll varies depending on the product.
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