Hasta La Ideas

Teepee-sized TP

As someone interested in how things go together, I must admit I’m far more fascinated by manufacturing than I am by the end products themselves. And folks, I know we’ve had a lot of toilet coverage this week with the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge and the Toilet Manufacturing Vid, but after watching this fascinating “How Toilet Paper is Made” video I couldn’t help but post it. The video shows everything from how the raw material( recycled paper) is processed to the actual winding of the cardboard tubes to the final packaging.

Interesting facts: I never realized that before the invention of toilet paper rolls, TP was called “therapeutic paper” and distributed as stacks of paper, like a bodega getting a delivery of newspapers. I also didn’t know, though my ID background should have led me to suspect, that toilet paper rolls are first cranked out in long toilet paper logs that get segmented by a mean-looking robotic circular saw. Also be sure to stick it out to the end of the vid, as the slow-motion look at the final packaging step is pretty cool.

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