Original subtitles

Forget spending a penny.

Last year in the UK we spent 2.5 billion pounds on toilet roll.

That's about 100 rolls per person.

[toilet flushes]

Used on an average of six daily trips to the loo.

Tonight we follow the journey your toilet roll takes--

940 miles from forest to factory.

It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week

to keep up with demand.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'm Gregg Wallace.

If King Kong used toilet paper,

that'd be the one he used.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And I'll

be discovering the extraordinary technology behind this most

ordinary bathroom essential.

Toilet paper at 40 miles an hour,

scraped off with the biggest razor blade in the world.

That's the way we do it.

GREGG WALLACE: [laughs]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm Cherry Healey.

Oh, what is that?

I'm getting hands-on at Britain's oldest toilet

factory.

It's going to toilet heaven.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And Ruth Goodman--

Richard.

Hello.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): --gets

to the bottom of our historical toilet habits.

At my Nan's house, if you ran out of loo paper

there was a nail.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE: In the next 24 hours,

this place will produce more than 700,000 toilet rolls.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[theme music]

This is the Essity Mill in Manchester.

This 27-acre site produces 130 tons of tissue every day.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): That's kitchen

roll as well as loo roll.

But tonight we're following the production

of their best seller--

Cushelle 2-ply toilet paper.

Before we could start making the paper

we need one vital ingredient.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Trees.

[upbeat music]

And these ones are growing on the remote East

Coast of Sweden.

What an absolutely beautiful place.

They normally only let me walk around factories.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This 6-and-a-half million acre

sustainable forest is larger than Wales,

and contains more than a billion spruce and pine trees.

Bjorn Lingfelt has been in the timber and paper business

for over 30 years.

Bjorn.

Hi, there.

What a beautiful place to come to work every day.

It is.

GREGG WALLACE: That, undoubtedly, it's

an incredible piece of machinery.

It is, indeed.

It's a harvester.

It cuts trees.

It takes off the branches and then cuts the stem

in logs of different qualities.

Look, look, look. He's got one now.

Look.

Look, look, look, look, look.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This is where our toilet

roll production line begins.

Whoa!

Now, that's the bit I like.

Look at that!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The harvester

chops down nearly 1,500 of these 30-meter tall trees every day.

Half the wood produced is shipped around the world

to make products like furniture and window frames.

The other half-- the offcuts--

is the raw material for all kinds of paper,

including toilet roll.

The sub-zero temperatures here mean the trees grow slowly,

producing high quality wood.

How long does a tree take to grow, Bjorn?

These trees here, they are about 100 years old.

GREGG WALLACE: If you can cut down a tree in minutes

and it takes 100 years to grow--

BJORN LINGFELT: Yup.

- -does that mean you're running out of trees?

No, no.

We have the world's greatest tree nursery growing

100 million trees per annum.

So you are planting more trees than you're cutting down.

BJORN LINGFELT: We are planting far more trees

than what we are cutting down.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Huge 35-ton grapplers lift

down logs onto a waiting lorry.

Then they driven 16 miles to a sawmill, where they are cut

into square sections of timber.

And the leftovers are chopped to produce woodchips,

which are what we need.

They take a short hop to the largest pulp mill in the world.

It receives 20 of these 45-ton deliveries every day.

This place is massive.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Two hours and 36 minutes

into our toilet paper production,

the woodchips head to the digester.

BJORN LINGFELT: We started off with this--

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah. The woodchips, right?

- BJORN LINGFELT: - -coming into this mill.

Now we'll see what we've done with it.

May I?

BJORN LINGFELT: Yes, please. It's a bit hot.

GREGG WALLACE: Whoa, whoa. It's hot.

This is cellulose pulp.

What we have in these woodchips is a number of good substances

of which cellulose is one, about 50% of it.

We cook those chips with chemicals

in order to separate the fibers and the good substances.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Cellulose exists

in the cell walls of plants, giving

them their basic structure.

Put simply, it's nature's building blocks.

GREGG WALLACE: And what are the properties of cellulose that

make it ideal for toilet paper?

BJORN LINGFELT: It as strong.

It is very clean.

And this kind of pulp is ideal for making

toilet paper hold together.

Then is that now ready to ship to Manchester?

No, it's not.

First, it's wet, and we don't want

to send water to Manchester.

There is already water in Manchester, I've heard.

[laughs]

And second, these fibers are entangled and knotty.

And we need to sort them out.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): But sorting them out seems

to involve even more water.

The soggy fibers are sent to a steamy machine

called the pulp former.

GREGG WALLACE: That, to me, looks like a fast flowing

river of boiling milk.

What on Earth is that?

That's actually the same fiber that we saw a minute ago,

but here they are disentangled.

We have mixed them up with lots and lots of water.

And then we are spraying them out on this wire,

as it's called.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The wire

is a 40-meter long revolving sieve through which the water

drains away, leaving a 2-millimeter thick cellulose

sheet behind.

GREGG WALLACE: If you'd have asked me to make

a list of the things I would least expect to find making

toilet paper, it would have been a fast flowing

river of porridge.

Yup.

It's amazing.

BJORN LINGFELT: Pretty cool, isn't it?

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah.

It's hot like a Swedish sauna.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The neatly arranged cellulose

is flattened between rollers, then

runs through a series of dryers behind this vast orange wall.

It emerges as a continuous sheet of dried pulp,

which is sliced into 70-centimeter rectangular

pieces.

GREGG WALLACE: And that is stacking

up now, what, usable sheets?

This is the end product of this pulp mill.

That can now get shipped to Manchester?

Yes.

This is bone dry pulp, ready to be used in the paper

making process in Manchester.

Bjorn, thank you.

It was fascinating.

BJORN LINGFELT: [non-english]

GREGG WALLACE: And it was nice to be out in the snow.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): These hard, thick sheets

have a long way to go before they're

the soft, absorbent paper we expect in our bathrooms.

[dog squeals]

And softness has always been toilet

roll's ultimate sales pitch.

Cute puppies and toilet paper--

they go together like fish and chips or jelly and ice cream.

But if you think about it, it's a really odd combination,

isn't it?

Almost illogical, really.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It dates back to 1972,

when a London-based advertising agency were coming up

with ideas to promote Andrex.

The advertisers wanted to show how long the roll of toilet

paper was, so they had an idea of sort of trailing

it about somebody's house.

And initially they thought a little girl would haul it out.

But the regulators weren't that keen on that.

And soon it became decided that a more

mischievous character was required,

and they chose one of these.

[music playing]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It was a campaign that

ran for more than 40 years, and transformed

loo roll advertising forever.

But it hasn't always been paper we've

reached for in the bathroom.

What we need is a toilet historian.

Richard.

Hello.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): And here he is, Richard Smith.

And we're better to meet than an old public lavatory?

So, Richard, before there was commercial toilet

paper what did we all use?

Well, for centuries people were, so to speak, taking

matters into their own hands--

those things like the notorious sponge on a stick,

which dates from ancient Rome.

You used it, you rinsed it off in a vat of vinegar,

and you left it for the next user.

[laughs]

In America, the corn cob with the corn groove--

RUTH GOODMAN: Oh, gosh.

RICHARD SMITH: --dried out, was kind of emblematic

of rural American society.

Really?

It was really treasured as an icon of that way of life.

When paper started being widely manufactured,

people did the obvious.

They put it in their outhouses and their toilets

and they used it for that purpose.

You know, I actually remember doing this.

RICHARD SMITH: [laughs]

Because at my Nan's house, if you ran out of loo paper

there was a nail.

[laughter]

So I suppose that sort of raises the question.

Why did we move from that to what we have now?

RICHARD SMITH: Commercial toilet paper.

When it was launched, there was no obvious need for it.

And so when Joseph Gayetty cooked up

the idea in the middle of the 19th century in New York,

his masterstroke was to create not just toilet paper

but medicated toilet paper.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Loo roll, as we know it,

gained popularity thanks to some good old fashioned

scaremongering.

Adverts in the 1920s suggested newspaper ink could cause

fatal illness, and that the only way to avoid a grisly death

was to wipe with this exciting new product,

although these early roles came with their own hazards.

The quality was extremely questionable.

There was one product that was actually sold with the selling

point of being splinter-free.

[gasps]

Which, you know, you would think

that was just a given when you're buying toilet paper.

Yeah, you would.

It was only later that, as the technology advanced,

2-ply paper became possible, which was softer,

more absorbent.

[music playing]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): As the paper got softer,

the message did too.

So much so, that it wasn't always

clear what the ads were for.

So at the very moment in which toilet

paper becomes more useful-- it's getting

better at doing its job--

is the very moment that the advertisers stop

talking about it doing its job.

Absolutely.

We're moving into-- into the age of euphemism here,

and we're leaving behind this frightening talk about toilet

illnesses, which dominated the advertising certainly

before the Second World War.

And we're moving into this luxury product.

[music playing]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): And luxury

led straight to Labradors--

[dogs squealing]

Aren't you gorgeous?

- RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): - -an ingenious way to suggest

softness and cleanliness.

RUTH GOODMAN: Toilet paper puppets

mark a real watershed in the marketing of this product.

Today all the brands emphasize comfort

and try to produce a warm, emotional connection

with their product.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): No one ever

felt that way about a corncob.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): My wood pulp

has made the 940-mile journey from the forests of Sweden

to the factory in Manchester.

At the intake area, it's ready to be turned into loo roll.

Seven lorries arrive here every day,

each one laden with 28-tons of pulp from all over the world.

Mill manager Jim Lange is overseeing the delivery.

That's the pulp that you've seen made in Sweden.

Why do you need a massive, massive

factory to just turn that-- that looks like paper already--

into paper?

You'll be forgiven for thinking

that that's quite close to the finished product,

but it's nowhere near.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Wood pulp

comes in different qualities.

It's categorized into short and long fiber,

and we need both types.

This is the pulp from Sweden.

OK?

So this is your long fiber.

This pulp is from Brazil.

This is eucalyptus.

This is short fiber.

OK?

Sweden, long fiber.

Yup.

- Brazil, short fiber. - Correct.

Right.

It's a bit like a salsa meets a smorgasbord.

Yeah.

So if you say that-- that's the short fiber.

You rip that.

Yup.

Now rip that.

GREGG WALLACE: Whoa. This is a lot stronger.

JIM LANGE: You see the difference?

Whoa.

Most certainly the one from Sweden is harder to rip.

That is as tough as old boots.

I mean, you know, remember what we've

got to do with this thing.

Yup.

You want strength, but you only want it for a few seconds.

You've got to put some South American stuff in it.

If we were to just use that it would be too rough.

And it would also be difficult to flush.

Yeah.

Right?

Softness is what we're gonna try and maximize

and bring out using this pulp.

We're gonna blend those two pulps together, Gregg,

and you're gonna make a batch so--

Really?

Yup, come on.

Am I going to get wet and messy?

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The long and short

of it is we need both fibers to make our loo roll.

We're starting with the strong Swedish long fiber, which

takes a leisurely trip up a conveyor belt

into the papermaking area.

And then, 10 hours and 21 minutes into the production

process, tumbles into a super sized mixer,

where I'm with process engineer Mark Spooner.

GREGG WALLACE: This is where the action is happening.

This is the pulper.

GREGG WALLACE: Right.

MARK SPOONER: This is where we mixed

these bales with water in here.

When I was out in Sweden, it took ages to dry those fibers.

Why are you making them soaking wet?

MARK SPOONER: Everything needs to be

wet so you can actually create a uniform sheet downstream.

We can only do that when there's diluted with water,

completely diluted with water.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This huge pulper

mixes 3750 kilograms of fiber with 34,000 liters of water.

As the bails fall in, a blade spins at 1,500 RPM

and rips them up.

So that literally is blades like a mixer at home

whizzing the water around.

And you are, bit by a bit, like, adding enormous stock cubes.

Yes.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Once all the bails are in,

a further 11,000 liters of water are added.

After 14 minutes of mixing, the pulp

is just 4% fiber and 96% water.

[music playing]

Since we're on the subject, Cherry is making toilets.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Armitage Shanks

have been making sanitary ware here in Staffordshire

for the last 150 years.

Britain's oldest bathroom factory churns out more

than 1,000 ceramic loos a day.

It all starts with a delivery of 30 tons of powdered clay.

CHERRY HEALEY: When I was a kid, one

of my favorite things in the world was playing with clay.

So this is like heaven on Earth.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Ashley Spink

has worked here for 20 years.

So where has this come from?

This has coming from Cornwall.

Does it come out of the Earth looking like that?

No, Cherry.

It's mind is clay, and then it's refined, and dried out, and

transported to us like this.

I mean, it's mixing with water right here,

and I can feel how sticky it is.

ASHLEY SPINK: Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: It's actually quite hard to lift my shoe up.

This really gives me a sense of how strong this stuff is.

ASHLEY SPINK: Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Our powder

is combined with 360 liters of water,

sand, and sodium silicate, turning it into liquid clay.

Now called slip, this is all they need to make toilets.

Oh, wow!

That looks very like an elephant's trunk.

This is the sieving process.

Underneath this vat here we've got one of these.

We need to take out any contamination, coarse material.

We need to make sure this slip is as smooth as possible.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): It takes four days

for the mix to settle before it's

ready for the molding machines.

Each one produces eight toilets at a time.

The slip is solidified under high pressure.

Then the soft, newly formed loos are

carefully removed by robots.

So how long is the slip in the mold?

ASHLEY SPINK: The whole cycle time, it's 30 minutes

and 20 seconds currently.

What happens if it's more or less

than 30 minutes and 20 seconds?

ASHLEY SPINK: If it's in the mall too long,

then we can get from where they can collapse.

So it's a very delicate process.

They need to be soft enough to mold,

but solid enough to hold their shape.

ASHLEY SPINK: That's correct.

Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): These brand

new loos have a long way to go before they're bathroom ready.

While they're still soft, rough edges are quickly rubbed off.

I love that you have both the coolest robots ever

at this factory, but also you still do stuff by hand.

It's all down to finesse, really.

All these parts are different.

They all need different things done to them.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Because of slight variations,

the lip inside the rim of the Bowl must be trimmed by hand.

Put the knife through, and we go all the way around.

- Then we take the waste out. - Right.

Wow.

There we go.

Would you like a go?

CHERRY HEALEY: What happens if I break it?

ASHLEY SPINK: You're OK.

Don't worry.

CHERRY HEALEY: You've got to be quite dexterous, don't you?

[laughs]

Woo-hoo!

Should we have a look at the final piece?

CHERRY HEALEY: Yeah.

Well, it's a bit gnarly in places.

Is this going to toilet heaven?

It's going to the skip.

[laughs]

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): My toilet may have to be dumped,

but the rest of the batch have made the grade.

They march into the drying tunnels,

and emerge 16 hours later--

drier, lighter, and 2.5% smaller.

OK.

So this is the glaze robot area, where we glaze the toilets.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Three coats

of white glaze are applied.

White has always been the best seller, and currently

accounts for more than 99% of the toilets they produce here.

ASHLEY SPINK: It gives its finish, and it's hygienic too.

So it seals the deal.

ASHLEY SPINK: It certainly does.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The glaze takes

another four hours to dry.

[upbeat music]

While this happens, they take a very

sedate spin around the factory.

CHERRY HEALEY: They're not quite ready to go,

but they do look beautiful and perfect.

[beeping]

Oh, here we go.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): And, finally, they face 17

hours in the 1,200-degree kiln.

This fixes the glaze.

CHERRY HEALEY: These toilets have been

on an immense 3-day adventure.

They've been molded, hand-finished,

glazed, and fired.

And now they're ready for a long life of service.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 10 hours and 35 minutes

into the papermaking process, my long fiber wood

pulp is drained from the pulp and pushed along to a container

known as a chest.

The short fiber pulp has been through a parallel process,

and is sitting ready in its own chest.

Both mixes contain 4% fiber and 96% water.

But as they're pumped towards the next stage of production,

more water is added, taking them to 99.9% liquid.

So this is the 4% pulp.

GREGG WALLACE: That is the consistency of paper mache.

At this point, we need to get that consistency down to 0.1%.

OK, that is dishwater.

There's a bit of fiber in there, I promise you.

That seems ludicrous to me.

You've taken something that looked like it was gonna become

toilet paper to something that looks like it's going

to flush the toilet paper away.

Yeah.

It's all a stage of the process.

Well, believe you but it's quite incredible.

Where's all this water coming from?

Well, on site it's 6,000 meters cubed,

but we reuse that water.

Just in this process alone we reuse the water 30 times.

Right, OK.

You're not just-- you're not just chucking it away.

No.

And even the water that comes waste from this process,

we reuse another 10 times around the site.

Right.

So we reuse water again, and again, and again.

All right. All right.

I thought we was just about to get millions of complaints.

- Right, OK. - No.

OK, I get.

It you recycle all the water all the time.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The water

mixes have, until this point, being kept firmly apart.

But now they're on a collision course

with a 40-meter long, 11-meter high machine that will

turn them from pulp to paper.

GREGG WALLACE: Wow.

That looks like some sort of crazed church organ.

What is this?

This is the first part of our paper machine.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This is known as the head box,

and it's a more complicated version of the very

steamy machine I saw in Sweden.

Over there I was only dealing with one kind of fiber,

but here we have two.

So in this pipe and this pipe we have the long fiber mixture.

In this pipe we have our short fiber.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): A 5-meter wide wire filter

loops through the machine.

Onto this, the pipes spray one layer of the fiber pulp

which will make our paper soft, and two

layers of the long fiber pulp which

will make our paper strong.

So you can have a look a little bit closer

at where we spray, if you'd like.

This is where the jets are squirting

the pulp that's gonna be paper.

Right?

Yes.

GREGG WALLACE: I'm really sorry.

That does not resemble paper.

That is still water.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The purpose

of the rest of this massive machine

is to remove this water.

Heated rollers push hot air up through the fibers,

fluffing them up, adding extra softness,

and eliminating 30% of the moisture.

Finally, 40 meters into its journey through this monster

machine, the fiber reaches a huge 138-ton, 12-meter

high dryer called the Yankee.

Alan Molton is waiting for me.

Are you Alan?

I am, Gregg, yes.

Are you in charge of that?

I am responsible for this.

GREGG WALLACE: That is an absolute beast.

ALAN MOLTON: It is.

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This huge, pressurized cylinder

is heated to 170 degrees C, and spins

at 1,100 meters-per-minute.

As the fiber approaches, a thin layer of glue

sticks it onto the drum.

It's carried over the top, where the heat evaporates

off the remaining water.

At the bottom, a 5.7-meter long razor blade scrapes it off,

producing this fast moving sheet of soft, dry paper.

That must have to be a very precise angle.

Very precise angle.

GREGG WALLACE: From the point where

I had that mush in my hand to this point here

has taken how long?

ALAN MOLTON: Well, from the head box,

it would be taking 4 seconds before it gets to this point

and it's coming off dry.

Look at that.

Bloody impressed.

Toilet paper at 40 miles an hour, drying out,

stuck on by glue, and scraped off with the biggest

razor blade in the world.

That's the way we do it.

GREGG WALLACE: [laughs]

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The wet pulp

has been dramatically transformed

into one enormous, continuous sheet of paper.

But it'll need cutting down to size

before it's ready for the average bathroom.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We're 10 hours and 55 minutes

into the production process.

Back in the factory, our toilet paper has been fully dried,

and is a huge 5-meter wide sheet traveling

at a rate of nearly 40 miles-an-hour

towards the quality control area.

Keith Jones is making sure it's up to scratch.

Hey-o, Gregg.

Welcome to the office.

Is that finally the toilet paper?

That's finally your toilet paper.

GREGG WALLACE: Wow.

What is happening under here?

So what happens under here is we have

our tester station, which is our scanner

which is just behind us there.

And that scans the sheet continuously

when we're not in here.

And it tells us exactly how much moisture's in the sheet

and how heavy the sheet is.

What happens if the scanner says this is not right,

this paper is too wet?

Before it goes too far out of tolerance,

it will make those changes back to the system.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): With Keith and his quality check

scanner happy, a 5-meter long cardboard

tube is locked into position and paper is wound onto it.

That is one ginormous roll of toilet paper!

KEITH JONES: Yep.

If King Kong used toilet paper,

that'd be the one he used.

Is there a name for that?

KEITH JONES: We call that a mother real.

Why?

Because that-- that is gonna give

birth to all the little reels.

That gives birth to thousands of little rolls.

GREGG WALLACE: How many toilet rolls out of that?

Well, what we're looking at there, Gregg,

is 25,000 toilet rolls.

GREGG WALLACE: [laughs] I don't whether to giggle just

be aghast at that.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): As these monster reels roll off

the end of the production line they are sliced in half,

producing a pair of 2 and 1/2-meter

wide single-ply mother reels each weighing 1.2 tons.

Paper, made.

Now it's time to create toilet rolls in the converting area,

where I'm meeting Alan Hughes.

[laughs] Are you Alan?

Pleased to meet you, Gregg.

How you doing?

I've be watching this monster being made.

Right, OK.

Now, I've come to you 'cause I want to see that

made into proper toilet rolls.

ALAN HUGHES: No problem.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The toilet rolls we're producing

will end up being 2-ply--

two sheets stuck together.

So we need both of the mother reels.

What we have is a plugin system.

- Do you want to have a go? - Can I?

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The first step

is to bang the plug-in each side of our reels.

It's a slightly bigger version of putting the loo roll

on its holder in your bathroom.

That's it.

Bullseye.

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): It's a job that

requires pinpoint accuracy.

That's it.

Perfect.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Two cranes

running on tracks in the ceiling lift our rolls off the ground.

Quite an effort, considering each one

weighs the same as a typical hatchback car.

Everything about this factory is super sized.

Everything.

Do you have interest when you visit other places?

Yes is the answer.

You look at their toilet paper?

Yes.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Our rolls are loaded

and head towards the converting machine.

This will be a match made in toilet paper heaven.

ALAN HUGHES: When they actually go into the machine,

that's what we call marrying.

So it's where we actually put the two sheets together.

You actually call it marrying?

Yeah.

And they go to their wedding in a carriage.

[laughter]

[wedding organ music]

These two, now they're go have their wedding night.

Yup.

They're gonna combine together and eventually create

loads of little toilet rolls.

ALAN HUGHES: Yeah, 25,000.

[laughs]

Do you, toilet roll, take this other toilet roll--

[laughter]

It's going to be some honeymoon, mate.

Alan, cheers, mate.

- I enjoyed that. - Pleased to meet you.

Forgive me, but I've got a wedding to go to.

See you later.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Presiding over the ceremony

is Tony Gilbody.

Tony.

Hi, Gregg.

I want you to show me how we turn that joint toilet

roll into the loo toilet rolls.

You've come to the right man.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The paper from my two mother reels

is unwound and fed into this machine.

One sheet comes in from the top, the other from the bottom.

Embossing rollers lock the two sheets together,

pressing in a pattern.

This isn't just decorative.

It also helps glue the sheets.

My paper is now 2-ply.

The glue is in this chamber here.

It's transferred to this roll.

This roll has tiny little pockets

in it, which pick up the glue.

It's then picked up by this rubber roll

and applied to the paper.

Glue getter, glue spreader, pattern maker.

Simply.

Is that it?

Yeah.

Brilliant.

And it's that glue that helps the two sides

of the paper to stick together.

TONY GILBODY: That's right, keeps the ply together.

When I watched the fibers, when they were wet being

sprayed onto the mat, they had the soft ones on top

and the strong ones in the middle.

This is what's happening now.

Right?

You're putting the two bits together so that the soft bits

are always on the outside?

TONY GILBODY: That's right.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Now happily married, from here it's

till toilet flush do us part.

[music playing]

We're 11 hours and 30 minutes into the production process.

Our newly created 2-ply toilet paper

head through the perforation machine,

which cuts it into 12-centimeter, easy-to-rip

sections.

So this is our paper after it's been perforated.

That's our perforation blade.

GREGG WALLACE: So it cuts holes in some of the paper.

TONY GILBODY: That's right.

You can have a look.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Right on it, really.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Next, it

needs to be wound around a cardboard

inner tube known as a core.

The core maker winds and glues a continuous ribbon of cardboard

around a mold, producing 33 of these extra long centers

every minute.

Why is that over six feet long?

Well, it needs to be the same width

as the paper, which is getting fed through the machine.

So are you gonna have to reroll the paper around this?

Exactly.

That's the next stage of our process.

GREGG WALLACE: You just don't do anything in small sizes,

do you?

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cores

make their way up a carousel and towards the rewinder, where

21.6 meters of perforated paper is wound onto each one,

producing an extra long toilet roll capable of spawning

24 individual rolls.

What are they called?

TONY GILBODY: Logs.

GREGG WALLACE: That machine just pushed out a log.

OK.

I I'm trying really hard to keep this clean.

You're not making it very easy for me.

So you can see the nice embossed pattern on the paper.

Feel it.

What's it feel like?

GREGG WALLACE: It feels soft.

TONY GILBODY: Feels nice and soft, exactly.

But this is the size of the toilet roll I'd have at home.

Exactly.

This is 180 sheets.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The diameter is perfect,

but the length isn't.

We need our finished toilet rolls

to measure 104.5 millimeters.

They're cut down to size at the aptly named log saw.

[music playing]

Oh, my word.

That's a big, scary machine.

That is cutting through those so fast.

The ones they're cutting through don't look like they're moving.

TONY GILBODY: Two razor sharp blades on there,

and they cut 230 rolls a minute.

That is spinning really fast.

What you have with the logs is from the process previous,

with a bit of imperfections on the end, and we cut those off.

They're called the donuts.

[laughs]

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): But I'm not here for donuts.

This is what it's all about.

14,000 rolls of toilet paper fly out of the log saw every hour.

There we are--

toilet rolls marching forward to their final destination.

Look at that.

TONY GILBODY: You'd never think it, looking at the toilet

roll on the shelf.

GREGG WALLACE: There's the sad little donut, right?

TONY GILBODY: Yeah.

Why do you cut the end off?

TONY GILBODY: OK.

If you just turn it over, see, you got the imperfect edge.

Yeah?

So we just cut the waste off.

GREGG WALLACE: But there must be something we can do with them.

TONY GILBODY: We'll not wasting them.

We put them back into our system.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: I feel sorry for the donut.

I think it wants to be with its mates.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The donuts head off

to be turned back into pulp, while our toilet rolls fall

through to the packing hall.

GREGG WALLACE: It's a lot of thought and effort that goes

into making these, to make sure that

one of the most personal things we do-- wiping our bums--

is a comfortable experience.

But just how luxurious could a trip to the toilet get?

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Our bathrooms

have never been so stylish.

But the technology contained within them

is still pretty simple.

CHERRY HEALEY: While soft-close lids and water

efficient flushes have improved our toilets,

the basic design hasn't changed in over a century.

But could all that be about to change?

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I want

to find out what the toilets of the future will look like.

[music playing]

The Japanese have long been ahead

of the game with bathroom tech.

And now they're selling their fancy loos in the UK.

Oh, that's hot.

[laughs]

It's a heated seat.

I wasn't expecting that.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Floyd Case works

for TOTO, who have sold more than 40 million

of these high tech toilets around the world.

The main function is the clean you.

If I can show you, I'll put this little hat in place.

And you'll see on your remote control

we have a number of functions.

If I press the rear button, a little wand that lives

in the seat will come out--

Oh!

What is that?

FLOYD CASE: --and wash you with clean, warm water.

Oh, I don't know if that looks nice.

[laughs]

FLOYD CASE: Dare I say, it's very pleasant.

I can change the position, because we're

all different shapes and sizes.

I can even have what you call an oscillating wash.

Wow.

I-- that's too much for me.

[laughs] It's getting rid of a lot of debris.

FLOYD CASE: Absolutely.

I mean, this person needs to go and see the doctor.

So you said there's a rear.

Does that mean there's a front?

FLOYD CASE: Absolutely.

So the front wash is for ladies. CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): What?

FLOYD CASE: I can even have a pulsate wash.

Stop it.

That is so incredibly--

Hygienic.

- -hygienic.

Absolutely.

I can then use the dryer function

to dry myself using warm air.

Get a lovely wash and then a blow dry.

FLOYD CASE: Absolutely.

[upbeat music]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): While these toilets are water

efficient, the average loo uses up to 10 liters

of water with every flush.

And for a third of the world's population

with no proper sanitation or sewers, that's a real issue.

A team at Cranfield University, with the help

of international funding, has set out to radically rethink

loo design for the first time in 100 years,

by removing the need for water.

They're led by Dr. Ewan McAdam.

Oh, wow.

So this is our working prototype.

I mean, it looks like a toilet but not quite as I know it.

EWAN MCADAM: That's right.

Rather than a water flush, we use a dry flush mechanism.

Every time this seat is pushed down, inside

here is a mechanism that cleans that bowl.

CHERRY HEALEY: OK.

EWAN MCADAM: So rather than using water

to transfer the urine and feces, we use a swipe

to clean the bowl inside.

And that then enables us to use no water at all.

What's so incredible is how simple--

Yeah.

- -that solution is.

So instead of using tons of water to get the waste out

and to clean it, you're simply using gravity and tipping.

EWAN MCADAM: That's right, yes.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The seat movement

also powers an Archimedes screw, that separates

solid waste from liquid.

They're working on a tiny combuster,

which will sit at the back of the unit and burn up the poo.

They've already devised a way to get clean water from the urine

using a special membrane.

EWAN MCADAM: So these membranes are hydrophobic.

And so what that means is they repel water.

And instead, the only thing that's

allowed to pass through that membrane is water as a vapor.

And so what you can see here, as a result of that separation,

is nice, clear water.

It's safe to discharge the environment,

and it would be safe for reuse.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): A more refined prototype

is currently being worked on--

a very different vision of what the toilet of the future looks

like.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Our toilet

rolls have been trimmed to size, and are heading

to the packing hall via 155 meters of

computer-controlled conveyors.

They're wrapped and heat-sealed into packs of nine,

then loaded onto pallets.

[music playing]

Now they head to the 5,000 square meters distribution

area.

After 11 hours and 31 minutes of soaking, drying, unrolling,

and rerolling, they're about to make

their way out of the factory.

Tony Slevin is overseeing the operation.

Are you in charge of all this, Tony?

Yeah.

This is a distribution area.

I don't suppose you know, dear, how many individual rolls

are there on that lorry.

TONY SLEVIN: Well, on the pallets is 1,080 rolls.

We have 48 pallets on the trailer, which works

out around about 52,000 rolls.

52,000 rolls.

And we use, individually, about 100 a year.

TONY SLEVIN: Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: So that lorry would last me 500 years?

Yeah.

It'd last you around about 500 years.

Even if I ate curry and prunes every day?

If that's your choice, yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: There is no seasonal peak

for you, is there? TONY SLEVIN: No.

GREGG WALLACE: You don't sell more around Easter.

TONY SLEVIN: No, the same.

Constant all year round.

Just constant supply, day in day out.

Yeah.

That's the very last pallet going on, right?

Yeah.

- That last pallet's going on. - Brilliant.

Do you know what?

If I hadn't seen that process with my own eyes,

I don't think I'd have ever have believed it.

Who could have imagined anything so simple

could be so complicated?

It's a long way from the Swedish forest.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Every day,

16 lorries ship loo roll out of here

and send it off around the UK.

The biggest users are in the Northeast, with London

and the East of England hot on their heels.

GREGG WALLACE: I am genuinely surprised that it takes

this much big, heavy, industrial machinery

to make something as light and fluffy as toilet roll.

But then I suppose they have to make so much of it.

Because if there is one item--

no matter how mundane we consider

it to be-- that we would never, ever want to run out of,

then it's this.