‘How Things Are Made’: The Speed of Industry

Tim Minshall’s How Things Are Made. (Image: WSJ)

Sun, 04 May 2025

By Marc LevinsonIf you’ve ever thought about the production of toilet paper, well, perhaps you’re just a bit odd. It’s not a subject to which most of us devote brainpower. But perhaps we should. Consider what it takes to make a single roll of this mundane product: planting and harvesting trees on a decades-long cycle; mincing the branches and trunks into chips; applying heat and chemicals to separate the cellulose fibres; aligning those fibres to make pulp; feeding the pulp into massive machines that dry it on a fast...

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