Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Office gadget turns waste paper into lavatory paper

Instead of sending shredded documents to a recycling centre, incurring expense and energy, office managers will soon be able to feed them into a machine and turn them into lavatory paper.

Pop in 40 sheets of regular A4 paper, and a half-hour later, the paper has been shredded, mixed with water, turned into a pulp, flattened, dried and converted into a roll of lavatory paper.

The manufacturers of the White Goat machine estimates it costs about 10c (6p) to turn the waste paper into loo paper – equating to about six times cheaper than a roll of Andrex White Toilet Tissue, which usually retails for about 38p.



The quality of the paper, as demonstrated in the video, suggests a fairer comparison could be Tesco Value paper, which costs just 11p a roll.

However, it is estimated that on top of any running costs the machine, made by Japanese company Oriental, will cost $100,000 (£63,000), making the economics of it suitable for large companies only.

The machine was unveiled about six weeks ago at the Eco Products trade fair in Tokyo.

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