All hail the new era in toilet paper, with pre-moistened towelettes on a roll! No question this is a good idea, at least in principle. But according to the Toilet Paper Encyclopedia, compiled at Toiletpaperworld.com, aloe-laden sheets of bathroom tissue were marketed before the Civil War.
That means this highly touted bathroom “advance” is really almost 150 years old in concept, other than the roll part.
What’s next? Will we find evidence that the cave drawings came about only because the artists ran out of pre-moistened towelettes on which to draw?
The real question is, Where is all the real innovation in toilet paper? Toilet paper is a close cousin of a handful of leaves, so let’s not get too smug about the quilted, super-soft, extra-strong offerings of our day.
Further, we could ask, Why haven’t we evolved beyond toilet paper? Or even, Why haven’t we evolved beyond toilets?
Very near approximations of the modern toilet function existed with indoor plumbing in Egypt and India before 2000 B.C., according to Bindeswar Pathak, an Indian researcher and sanitation activist.
Maybe the lack of innovation stems from the fact that we treat going to the bathroom as a little bit of Zen that provides a meditative moment away from the crush and rush of the day. So we think of it only as comfort, not something that requires change.
Nevertheless, with all the advances of science and technology, shouldn’t we all be using some form of extractor by now?
Shouldn’t we be standing around at parties, giggling about the crude past when people had bathrooms and–yikes–touched themselves back there with only a thin layer of tissue?
This is 2002! Toilet paper showed up in China in the 1300s, maybe earlier. We’ve had centuries to think about this, and all we’ve done is add texture, prints and perfume, the latter two seeming to be on the wane.
Do the pretty patterns really matter in the scheme of things? People don’t visit our bathrooms in search of tissue prints.
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“Listen, Ruth, I really like that beautiful glass vessel sink and tumbled marble, but what really does it for me are the flower prints on the toilet paper. Gorgeous. I’m sorry for what I had to do to it.”
One could argue that at the beginning of the 20th Century and earlier, people at least performed this task with more panache, using some gorgeous chamber pots. So though the technology was not highly evolved, the vessels looked terrific.
And perfume? That’s like splashing on cologne at a landfill.
Progress is taking too long. Manned flight progressed from Kitty Hawk to the moon in just 66 years. And going to the moon involved far fewer people than going to the bathroom.
“We’re talking about a technology that scientists have not put their minds to,” complained historical researcher Craig Pfannkuche of Wonder Lake, speaking of the big picture. “I used to be a senior guide for Friends of the Chicago River, and one of the things we used to talk about was that there has been no real change in the way we get rid of our waste.”
He explained how while on a tour near Chicago’s Bubbly Creek, he saw toilet paper floating by on its way to the sea.
In other words, one way or another, our human deposits and their accouterments still end up splashed into our environment.
We can, however, count one blessing. “A large chunk of the world [chunk was his word] doesn’t even use toilet paper,” Pfannkuche added, and that isn’t because they found some great alternative. They use their–ahem–imagination.
Visitors to Japan note that the land of high technology has addressed this subject. The high-end Toto toilets can wash and dry the user; no tissue necessary. And the company offers an attachment that can be retrofitted on some standard toilets, but then, you’ve got to arrange the electrical supply.
Yet Toto isn’t just in Japan anymore. It’s in this country too, and now other companies are competing for the wash-and-dry market, with that luxury available for as little as about $500, not including installation.
This, friends, is innovation. Now we are getting somewhere. Consider the money saved by not having to buy tissue, and thing will pay for itself at some point.
Pfannkuche bowed to that idea as an advance, yet bemoaned the fact that ultimately, we still don’t have a good answer for sewage once it leaves our domains, because the lead and cadmium from human waste still end up fouling the environment.
So, parents, here is a challenge for your budding geniuses at their upcoming science fairs. Help them get past the toilet humor and then put their minds to the task, because we need some real answers. This is no simple paper chase.
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Send e-mail for Ross Werland to [email protected].