Now you can turn office documents into toilet paper

Thursday, July 15, 2010 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: toilet paper, recycling, health news

(NaturalNews) A Japanese company known as Oriental has invented a device that recycles office paper into toilet paper onsite.

"All the customers needs to do is put the shredded paper in, take the toilet paper out and supply the machine with water," said Oriental's technology manager, Kimihiro Nozawa.

The machine, dubbed White Goat, can turn 40 regular sheets of office paper into a roll of toilet paper in only 30 minutes. According to Oriental, the device removes all staples then shreds the paper, mixes it with water and turns it into pulp, flattens and dries the pulp, then converts into a toilet paper roll. Accounting of operating costs of the machine, it costs only 10 cents to produce a single roll.

The Telegraph notes that this is substantially cheaper than a typical roll of high-quality toilet paper, which retails for approximately 38 pence (59 cents). The quality of the White Goat's toilet paper is probably closer to that of Tesco Value paper, which retails for 11 pence (17 cents a roll).

Yet while the machine may help offices save on toilet paper and offsite recycling costs, the up-front cost will still be daunting for many. The machine retails for $100,000, meaning that it would need to produce 200,000 rolls of toilet paper in order to pay for itself. This would require running continuously for at least 11 years. In addition, the machine is 6 feet tall and weighs 94 stone (1,300 pounds).

Nevertheless, the machine received a prize for innovation upon its unveiling at the 2009 Eco-products International Fair in Tokyo, and has attracted a fair amount of attention on the Internet.

"I can think of several people who'd like to flush their workload down the loo, but this takes it to another level," said James Holland, editor of the web site Electricpig.

Sources for this story include: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howabout... ; www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1247....