WEBVTT

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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