Earlier this week I spoke to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State University about The History of Toilet Paper and SUCH! The audience had lots of good questions. One was why is toilet paper white and why don’t we have colored toilet paper. The first answer is in the manufacturing of toilet paper chlorine or hydrogen peroxide is used to make the lignin in the wood pulp white and to also to get recycled fibers white.
During the 1950s it was trendy to have colored toilet paper and many households had color coordinated bathrooms. However, adding a dye to toilet paper is costly and there is concern about the safety of some of the dyes; so the use of colored toilet paper faded away in America. However, one can find colored toilet paper (even black) in South America and Europe.
