7 ms·

Toilet Paper History: How America Convinced the World to Wipe (2009)

102 points by shawndumas 9y ago

autokad 9y ago
> "But as our economy continues to circle the drain, will Americans part with their beloved toilet paper in order to adopt more money-saving measures? Or will we keep flushing our cash away?" written in 2009, so I guess we know that yeah, we will continue using toilet paper. Though more are using flush-able wipes
- allengeorge 9y ago
  Which are often not flushable. [1] [2] [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/flushable-wipes-clogging-canadian-sewers-waste-water-officials-say-1.2430071 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/flushable-wipes-clogging-canad... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-bo... Edit: And, just in case you wanted to know more: they cause serious damage. [3] [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/putrid-130-ton-mass-clogging-london-sewer-highlights-worldwide-sewer-strife/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/putrid-130-ton-mass-...
- allengeorge 9y ago
  Also, I found this article on flushable wipes really interesting! [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/are-wet-wipes-wrecking-the-worlds-sewers/504098/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/are-wet-...
- nugi 9y ago
  Please do not flush 'flushable' wipes. It is a lie!
schoen 9y ago
Something I find quite strange is how South American countries pervasively discourage people from flushing used toilet paper (instead preferring to have a little wastebasket to collect it and later throw it away in the trash). The usual account of the reason for this is that the plumbing can't handle it -- which you also hear about some old buildings in the U.S. OK, but this norm persists even in buildings that were constructed within the last decade, like some super-recent hotels and airport terminals. Surely the plumbing there should be able to handle toilet paper, right?
- diab0lic 9y ago
  That plumbing eventually connects to infrastructure constructed decades ago which presumably cannot handle the paper.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  If the signs say don't flush anything down, they usually mean anything other than toilet paper and bodily excretions. Flushing tampons, pads, condoms, whatever the hell else is in your pocket is common and that is what those signs are discouraging. Toilet paper is designed to basically disintegrate once it gets wet, so it is not causing any problems in plumbing
  - waterphone 9y ago
    In many Central and South American countries, flushing toilet paper is explicitly discouraged.
    - siddboots 9y ago
      Same in most of SE Asia.
  - girvo 9y ago
    In Cuba, we were told in no uncertain terms not to flush toilet paper (or anything else, of course).
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      That may be because you are using paper which isn't designed to disintegrate upon contact with water. My anus does recall travels in South America where provided toilet products were rough and relatively ineffective. At least in North Africa and China you are living in a capitalistic market where toilet products of varying qualities can be readily had.
  - bootlooped 9y ago
    In Korea there are buildings that still insist you don't flush toilet paper. They usually say specifically toilet paper. My position is that it would not be dangerous to ignore this, firstly, because like you stated toilet paper is very weak when wet, and secondly, the impression that I got was that it was mostly an old-fashioned idea.
corey_moncure 9y ago
If you got poop on your arm, you wouldn't smear it around with a dry piece of paper.
- disnsj 9y ago
  Shit shower shave. The trick is in the timing.
jacknews 9y ago
"The question is, if toilet paper becomes a luxury item, can Americans live without it?" The article itself appears to be part of the marketing machine. I don't at all consider toilet paper a luxury, in fact using water seems far more satisfactory and hygienic. Japanese style washlets and european bidets are the luxury, um, end, of the market. If anything, plain toilet paper is set to be discarded as a rather unhygienic relic.
- GreaterFool 9y ago
  I hate traveling outside Japan! Can't live without "shower toilets" (that's how they're called here). It's hardly a luxury. It's an essential household equipment! I feel like I'm going to barbarian lands when I leave Japan (for the sake of full disclosure, I'm not Japanese)
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    You could also just try using Baby wipes?
    - thomastjeffery 9y ago
      It's a bad idea to flush those. They don't degrade, and end up blocking sewers and ruin septic systems.
      - kyrra 9y ago
        There are flushable versions. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Huggies-Pull-Ups-Big-Kid-Flushable-Wipes-51-count/23746171 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Huggies-Pull-Ups-Big-Kid-Flushabl...
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        They sure do say that. Don't believe them.
damnyou 9y ago
Toilet paper use is a sign of an uncivilized society. Civilized societies uses bidets in their various forms, with the Japanese ahead of everyone else.
perfectstorm 9y ago
Having used bidets in India and Japan I can never go back to toilet papers if I've a choice.
- 3131s 9y ago
  Agreed, toilet paper falls short in nearly every regard compared to a bidet or a "bum gun". Using water is faster, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly.
- yousufmyh 9y ago
  Totally agreed.
cyberjunkie 9y ago
Holy shit! A hand-spray is any day better (than of course a hand and mug to the rear)! - India
pruthvishetty 9y ago
Not India.
- afroboy 9y ago
  Not Arabs too.
electic 9y ago
This might be TMI but I never understood toilet paper. Think about it. You are taking a piece of paper and just spreading it around. No matter how hard you try it's still there. It's not clean. Gross. In fact, the use of toilet paper has spurred a whole new industry that most other countries don't have...the ointment industry. Washlets or bidets are far cleaner and preferred.
- usaphp 9y ago
  But when you use water - don’t you get your hands dirty? At least with paper you have paper to do all the work instead of your fingers?
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    You can wash your hands with a nice antibacterial soap. It's easy and very clean.
    - yeahsure 9y ago
      Isn't every soap antibacterial?
      - nugi 9y ago
        Yup. But some have extra stuff that poisons you and your environment too marketed to rubes as 'antibacterial'
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        No most are just detergents that make the dirt loose and then you wash it off using water. Anti-bacterial soap kills the bacteria before you wash them off using water.
      - sytelus 9y ago
        Yes, regular soap is as good as killing bacteria as anti-bacterial soap: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20070817/plain-soap-as-good-as-antibacterial#1 https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20070817/plain-soap-...
hbarka 9y ago
I’ve heard some Europeans call it the “sandpaper practice”.
Jach 9y ago
Tried a Japanese toilet, I like the combination of spray + paper. Spraying alone would be gross, I'll take the paper alone over the spray alone (Japan seems to agree at least with public toilets that don't have sprays). It's just like your hands not being clean until you dry them. But really any method that doesn't use soap is leaving you dirty until you can shower. What I don't get is why anyone wants to take cleanliness advice from cultures that still follow a "one hand for eating, one for wiping" custom.
- neutronicus 9y ago
  That's not an area of your body that you should be washing with soap very often. It's a mucous membrane, and if you soap those up they get dry and irritated. My doctor told me this when I complained of itching and irritation, and following his advice finally got me some much-needed relief.
singingfish 9y ago
The bum hose is a wonderful thing. Especially for us hairy bastards.
chmaynard 9y ago
I'm too embarrassed to comment.
bencollier49 9y ago
Factually incorrect article - fails to mention the Chinese at all, and credits America with the invention of soft toilet paper. "From the records of the Imperial Bureau of Supplies of that same year [1398], it was also recorded that for the Hongwu Emperor's imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was even perfumed."
tzs 9y ago
OK, if we are going to talk about toilet paper and its use...I'm reminded of a Q&A column at some gaming site about 15 years ago. Someone wrote in and said that he and his friends were talking after a LAN party, and somehow the question of which direction you wipe came up. He said that he was the only one in the group who went bottom to top (bottom up). Everyone else did top to bottom (top down), and told him he was a freak. The columnist, after wondering why the hell this topic came up after their LAN party, admitted, if I recall correctly, to also going bottom up, and she asked around the office and found that something like 90 went top down. I was totally surprised by this question. It never occurred to me that anyone would use the opposite direction from the one I use. The thing is, I have no idea why I go the way I do...presumably I was taught that when I was young enough to need assistance, so presumably I learned to use the same direction as my teachers, but that's before my earliest memories. If the columnist's observation, and the original questioner's observation, and what I and a friend observed when we asked around at work, hold up, then it looks like there is a heavy skew toward top down. So...how does bottom up persist? Unless there is some factor that tends to make bottom up people tend to marry other bottom up people, most bottom up people will marry to down people, and so most children of bottom people will be raised in a mixed direction household. So shouldn't half of them take after their top down parent, and so shouldn't the bottom up fraction be decreasing? Or...maybe some people who themselves use top down find bottom up works better when they are teaching a young child, and that leads some children of top down households to end up bottom up? There's probably some fascinating psychology research possibilities in this, but because we generally don't wipe in public or talk about it, it gets lost in the cracks.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  An abundance of anus hairs in my case. Top to bottom (back to front) aligns the hairs in such a way that they don't end up stuck in the anus hole, which I've experienced leading to itching and irritation. However, at least one front to back (bottom to top?) is mandatory in the middle of the loop for increased cleanliness, as either the skin folds or anus hairs obscure some fecal matter that the top to bottom (back to front) directionality doesn't pick up.
- anotherevan 9y ago
RandomInteger4 9y ago
From reading through some of the comments I really have to ask, is wiping ones ass really that complicated? Get some single ply (not the cheap shit in public bathrooms, which is often like 0.25 ply or whatever the fuck ... fucking wax paper or some shit), fold it sheet-over-sheet using 5 sheets (defined by the perforation) for the first wipe, use 4 or 5 sheets for the second wipe, then finish off with a third wipe at 4 sheets. A wipe is one iteration through the ass_wipe_process loop, which has 2-3 sub-wipes depending on how comfortable you feel folding in half the 4-5 sheet-over-sheet folded unit. I'm a dude, so I wipe back to front the first few sub-wipes, with a front to back followed back a back to front mixed in there somewhere. The reason for this directionality has to do with the length of my anus hair, which depends on when I've groomed it. The longer the anus hair, the more likely a front to back sub-wipe will lead to anus hairs in the butthole, causing itching and irritation. For some reason this doesn't happen with the back to front sub-wipe, so that is mandatory after a front to back, in order to realign the anus hairs. Pro-Tip: Only groom hair close to the anus, otherwise you might end up with an ass-cyst from sitting on a groomed region where the hair can't properly grow out due to the pressure from sitting. Generally there's less constipation after grooming as though the hairs themselves bind the anus closed or some shit. I mean seriously, just fucking take this shit seriously and do it right so you don't end up with shit in your undies stinking up the place or spreading fecal matter all over the place, getting people sick.
milani 9y ago
Middle-eastern countries have used water for centuries to clean after the act. Nowadays, they are converting to western style as it seems luxury!
- pseingatl 9y ago
  No, they are not. A shouf (water hose) is always next to the toilet in Middle Eastern countries and in public facilities. Always.
pseingatl 9y ago
Interesting how Maduro's Venezuelan toilet paper crisis could be solved with soap and water.
bidetsprayerman 9y ago
Toilet Paper is obsolete and just plain nasty and Wet Wipes are causing expensive clogs in the sewers and septic systems. With modern plumbing we should all be washing not wiping and the best way to do that is with a Hand Bidet Sprayer. Far cleaner, healthier, saves money and you never run out. See www.bathroomsprayer.com.
juancn 9y ago
I don't understand societies with no bidet, you basically walk around with dirty asses all day long (or use wet wipes).

102 points by shawndumas 9y ago

> "But as our economy continues to circle the drain, will Americans part with their beloved toilet paper in order to adopt more money-saving measures? Or will we keep flushing our cash away?" written in 2009, so I guess we know that yeah, we will continue using toilet paper. Though more are using flush-able wipes

allengeorge 9y ago
Which are often not flushable. [1] [2] [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/flushable-wipes-clogging-canadian-sewers-waste-water-officials-say-1.2430071 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/flushable-wipes-clogging-canad... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-bo... Edit: And, just in case you wanted to know more: they cause serious damage. [3] [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/putrid-130-ton-mass-clogging-london-sewer-highlights-worldwide-sewer-strife/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/putrid-130-ton-mass-...
allengeorge 9y ago
Also, I found this article on flushable wipes really interesting! [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/are-wet-wipes-wrecking-the-worlds-sewers/504098/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/are-wet-...
nugi 9y ago
Please do not flush 'flushable' wipes. It is a lie!

schoen 9y ago

Something I find quite strange is how South American countries pervasively discourage people from flushing used toilet paper (instead preferring to have a little wastebasket to collect it and later throw it away in the trash). The usual account of the reason for this is that the plumbing can't handle it -- which you also hear about some old buildings in the U.S. OK, but this norm persists even in buildings that were constructed within the last decade, like some super-recent hotels and airport terminals. Surely the plumbing there should be able to handle toilet paper, right?

diab0lic 9y ago
That plumbing eventually connects to infrastructure constructed decades ago which presumably cannot handle the paper.
oh_sigh 9y ago
If the signs say don't flush anything down, they usually mean anything other than toilet paper and bodily excretions. Flushing tampons, pads, condoms, whatever the hell else is in your pocket is common and that is what those signs are discouraging. Toilet paper is designed to basically disintegrate once it gets wet, so it is not causing any problems in plumbing
- waterphone 9y ago
  In many Central and South American countries, flushing toilet paper is explicitly discouraged.
  - siddboots 9y ago
    Same in most of SE Asia.
- girvo 9y ago
  In Cuba, we were told in no uncertain terms not to flush toilet paper (or anything else, of course).
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    That may be because you are using paper which isn't designed to disintegrate upon contact with water. My anus does recall travels in South America where provided toilet products were rough and relatively ineffective. At least in North Africa and China you are living in a capitalistic market where toilet products of varying qualities can be readily had.
- bootlooped 9y ago
  In Korea there are buildings that still insist you don't flush toilet paper. They usually say specifically toilet paper. My position is that it would not be dangerous to ignore this, firstly, because like you stated toilet paper is very weak when wet, and secondly, the impression that I got was that it was mostly an old-fashioned idea.

corey_moncure 9y ago

If you got poop on your arm, you wouldn't smear it around with a dry piece of paper.

disnsj 9y ago
Shit shower shave. The trick is in the timing.

jacknews 9y ago

"The question is, if toilet paper becomes a luxury item, can Americans live without it?" The article itself appears to be part of the marketing machine. I don't at all consider toilet paper a luxury, in fact using water seems far more satisfactory and hygienic. Japanese style washlets and european bidets are the luxury, um, end, of the market. If anything, plain toilet paper is set to be discarded as a rather unhygienic relic.

GreaterFool 9y ago
I hate traveling outside Japan! Can't live without "shower toilets" (that's how they're called here). It's hardly a luxury. It's an essential household equipment! I feel like I'm going to barbarian lands when I leave Japan (for the sake of full disclosure, I'm not Japanese)
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  You could also just try using Baby wipes?
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    It's a bad idea to flush those. They don't degrade, and end up blocking sewers and ruin septic systems.
    - kyrra 9y ago
      There are flushable versions. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Huggies-Pull-Ups-Big-Kid-Flushable-Wipes-51-count/23746171 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Huggies-Pull-Ups-Big-Kid-Flushabl...
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        They sure do say that. Don't believe them.

damnyou 9y ago

Toilet paper use is a sign of an uncivilized society. Civilized societies uses bidets in their various forms, with the Japanese ahead of everyone else.

perfectstorm 9y ago

Having used bidets in India and Japan I can never go back to toilet papers if I've a choice.

3131s 9y ago
Agreed, toilet paper falls short in nearly every regard compared to a bidet or a "bum gun". Using water is faster, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly.
yousufmyh 9y ago
Totally agreed.

cyberjunkie 9y ago

Holy shit! A hand-spray is any day better (than of course a hand and mug to the rear)! - India

pruthvishetty 9y ago

Not India.

afroboy 9y ago
Not Arabs too.

electic 9y ago

This might be TMI but I never understood toilet paper. Think about it. You are taking a piece of paper and just spreading it around. No matter how hard you try it's still there. It's not clean. Gross. In fact, the use of toilet paper has spurred a whole new industry that most other countries don't have...the ointment industry. Washlets or bidets are far cleaner and preferred.

usaphp 9y ago
But when you use water - don’t you get your hands dirty? At least with paper you have paper to do all the work instead of your fingers?
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  You can wash your hands with a nice antibacterial soap. It's easy and very clean.
  - yeahsure 9y ago
    Isn't every soap antibacterial?
    - nugi 9y ago
      Yup. But some have extra stuff that poisons you and your environment too marketed to rubes as 'antibacterial'
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      No most are just detergents that make the dirt loose and then you wash it off using water. Anti-bacterial soap kills the bacteria before you wash them off using water.
    - sytelus 9y ago
      Yes, regular soap is as good as killing bacteria as anti-bacterial soap: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20070817/plain-soap-as-good-as-antibacterial#1 https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20070817/plain-soap-...

hbarka 9y ago

I’ve heard some Europeans call it the “sandpaper practice”.

Jach 9y ago

Tried a Japanese toilet, I like the combination of spray + paper. Spraying alone would be gross, I'll take the paper alone over the spray alone (Japan seems to agree at least with public toilets that don't have sprays). It's just like your hands not being clean until you dry them. But really any method that doesn't use soap is leaving you dirty until you can shower. What I don't get is why anyone wants to take cleanliness advice from cultures that still follow a "one hand for eating, one for wiping" custom.

neutronicus 9y ago
That's not an area of your body that you should be washing with soap very often. It's a mucous membrane, and if you soap those up they get dry and irritated. My doctor told me this when I complained of itching and irritation, and following his advice finally got me some much-needed relief.

singingfish 9y ago

The bum hose is a wonderful thing. Especially for us hairy bastards.

chmaynard 9y ago

I'm too embarrassed to comment.

bencollier49 9y ago

Factually incorrect article - fails to mention the Chinese at all, and credits America with the invention of soft toilet paper. "From the records of the Imperial Bureau of Supplies of that same year [1398], it was also recorded that for the Hongwu Emperor's imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was even perfumed."

tzs 9y ago

OK, if we are going to talk about toilet paper and its use...I'm reminded of a Q&A column at some gaming site about 15 years ago. Someone wrote in and said that he and his friends were talking after a LAN party, and somehow the question of which direction you wipe came up. He said that he was the only one in the group who went bottom to top (bottom up). Everyone else did top to bottom (top down), and told him he was a freak. The columnist, after wondering why the hell this topic came up after their LAN party, admitted, if I recall correctly, to also going bottom up, and she asked around the office and found that something like 90 went top down. I was totally surprised by this question. It never occurred to me that anyone would use the opposite direction from the one I use. The thing is, I have no idea why I go the way I do...presumably I was taught that when I was young enough to need assistance, so presumably I learned to use the same direction as my teachers, but that's before my earliest memories. If the columnist's observation, and the original questioner's observation, and what I and a friend observed when we asked around at work, hold up, then it looks like there is a heavy skew toward top down. So...how does bottom up persist? Unless there is some factor that tends to make bottom up people tend to marry other bottom up people, most bottom up people will marry to down people, and so most children of bottom people will be raised in a mixed direction household. So shouldn't half of them take after their top down parent, and so shouldn't the bottom up fraction be decreasing? Or...maybe some people who themselves use top down find bottom up works better when they are teaching a young child, and that leads some children of top down households to end up bottom up? There's probably some fascinating psychology research possibilities in this, but because we generally don't wipe in public or talk about it, it gets lost in the cracks.

RandomInteger4 9y ago
An abundance of anus hairs in my case. Top to bottom (back to front) aligns the hairs in such a way that they don't end up stuck in the anus hole, which I've experienced leading to itching and irritation. However, at least one front to back (bottom to top?) is mandatory in the middle of the loop for increased cleanliness, as either the skin folds or anus hairs obscure some fecal matter that the top to bottom (back to front) directionality doesn't pick up.
anotherevan 9y ago

RandomInteger4 9y ago

From reading through some of the comments I really have to ask, is wiping ones ass really that complicated? Get some single ply (not the cheap shit in public bathrooms, which is often like 0.25 ply or whatever the fuck ... fucking wax paper or some shit), fold it sheet-over-sheet using 5 sheets (defined by the perforation) for the first wipe, use 4 or 5 sheets for the second wipe, then finish off with a third wipe at 4 sheets. A wipe is one iteration through the ass_wipe_process loop, which has 2-3 sub-wipes depending on how comfortable you feel folding in half the 4-5 sheet-over-sheet folded unit. I'm a dude, so I wipe back to front the first few sub-wipes, with a front to back followed back a back to front mixed in there somewhere. The reason for this directionality has to do with the length of my anus hair, which depends on when I've groomed it. The longer the anus hair, the more likely a front to back sub-wipe will lead to anus hairs in the butthole, causing itching and irritation. For some reason this doesn't happen with the back to front sub-wipe, so that is mandatory after a front to back, in order to realign the anus hairs. Pro-Tip: Only groom hair close to the anus, otherwise you might end up with an ass-cyst from sitting on a groomed region where the hair can't properly grow out due to the pressure from sitting. Generally there's less constipation after grooming as though the hairs themselves bind the anus closed or some shit. I mean seriously, just fucking take this shit seriously and do it right so you don't end up with shit in your undies stinking up the place or spreading fecal matter all over the place, getting people sick.

milani 9y ago

Middle-eastern countries have used water for centuries to clean after the act. Nowadays, they are converting to western style as it seems luxury!

pseingatl 9y ago
No, they are not. A shouf (water hose) is always next to the toilet in Middle Eastern countries and in public facilities. Always.

pseingatl 9y ago

Interesting how Maduro's Venezuelan toilet paper crisis could be solved with soap and water.

bidetsprayerman 9y ago

Toilet Paper is obsolete and just plain nasty and Wet Wipes are causing expensive clogs in the sewers and septic systems. With modern plumbing we should all be washing not wiping and the best way to do that is with a Hand Bidet Sprayer. Far cleaner, healthier, saves money and you never run out. See www.bathroomsprayer.com.

juancn 9y ago

I don't understand societies with no bidet, you basically walk around with dirty asses all day long (or use wet wipes).