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[MUSIC]

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Joan Cartan-Hansen, Host: The 
toilet paper you have in your

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house is a fairly recent 
invention.

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Before that, people used leaves, 
a shared stick with a sponge,

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even pages from the Sears 
Roebuck catalog.

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But when sewage and wastewater 
systems were being installed,

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they found those old catalog 
pages clogged up the pipes.

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So in the 1850's, Joseph Gayetty 
began selling boxed sheets of

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hemp-based paper.

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Toilet paper today is made from 
trees.

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The bark is taken off the wood 
and is chipped into small

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pieces.

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The wood chips are mixed with 
water and chemicals to make a

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slurry and the slurry is cooked, 
creating a pulp.

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Once the paper is dried, it's 
scraped off onto large sheets.

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Those sheets are wound onto 
large rolls called paper logs.

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Then the logs are cut and 
wrapped into packages of toilet

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paper.

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Toilet paper is specifically 
designed to dissolve after

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flushing, thus savings all of us 
from plumbing disaster.

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For more information about 
sewage, check out the science

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trek website.

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You'll find it at science trek 
dot org