The toilet paper capital of the world
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Above: View of downtown Green Bay CityDeck along the Fox River. Green Bay is the oldest city in Wisconsin.
Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International: Chris Rand
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Green Bay, Wisconsin
- Famous for the Green Bay Packers and is also the Toilet Paper Capital of the world.
Green Bay is in the northeastern part of Wisconsin, located at the southern end of Green Bay (an arm of Lake Michigan) at the mouth of the Fox River. It is about 90 miles north of Milwaukee. Green Bay is the county seat of Brown County.
Green Bay is an industrial city with several meatpacking plants, paper mills, and a port on Green Bay, known locally as "the Bay of Green Bay".
Green Bay is the home of the Neville Public Museum, with exhibitions of art, history, and science; the Children's Museum; the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay; and the Green Bay Packers.
History
Samuel de Champlain, the founder of New France, commissioned Jean Nicolet to form a peaceful alliance with Native Americans in the western areas, whose unrest interfered with French fur trade, and to search for a shorter trade route to China through Canada.
Green Bay's title of 'toilet paper capital of the world' has a long history
GREEN BAY - Long before a spare six-pack in the linen closet separated the haves from the have-nots during coronavirus pandemic panic buying, toilet paper has been on a roll in Green Bay.
We’re not talking just a modest roll. More like a mega roll.
You won’t see it painted on the water tower or splashed across a lot of T-shirts, but they don’t call Green Bay the "toilet paper capital of the world” for nothing. Birthplace and home of the Green Bay Packers, yes, but also where the first “splinter-free toilet paper” was introduced in 1935.
Northern Paper Mills, founded in Green Bay in 1901, became the largest producer of toilet paper in the world as Northern Tissue in 1920. The robust production of toilet paper helped to cushion the city from the worst of The Great Depression.
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The people growing their own toilet paper
Large-scale production has not yet been explored. Instead companies such as WEPA, one of Europe's largest toilet paper manufacturers, are reducing the environmental impact of conventional toilet paper in other ways. WEPA has developed a new method using recycled cardboard to produce toilet paper, which does not involve bleaching the fibres, a spokesperson says.
Typically wood pulp is bleached before it is turned into paper, which releases chlorinated compounds into the environment. These compounds can react with carbon-based materials, creating dioxins which are highly toxic chemicals associated with cancer and other health risks, according to a report by the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council.
The toilet paper plant, meanwhile, is expected to have a "minimal" impact on the industry, says a WEPA spokesperson.
One drawback is that wastewater and disposal systems, especially in Europe, aren't designed to handle this type of paper, as only soluble items can be flushed through the system, the spokesperson says.
Greenfield says that's where compost toilets come in. "I use a compost toilet. The leav
All the Ways We’ve Wiped: The History of Toilet Paper and What Came Before
Although paper originated in China in the second century B.C., the first recorded use of paper for cleansing is from the 6th century in medieval China, discovered in the texts of scholar Yen Chih-Thui. In 589 A.D, he wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.”
By the early 14th century, the Chinese were manufacturing toilet paper at the rate of 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family.
Paper became widely available in the 15th century, but in the Western world, modern commercially available toilet paper didn’t originate until 1857, when Joseph Gayetty of New York marketed a "Medicated Paper, for the Water-Closet,” sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents. Before his product hit the market, Americans improvised in clever ways.
Barry Kudrowitz, associate professor and director of product design at the University of Minnesota, has studied the history and use of toilet paper.