Just this small effort will reduce waste in the sense that it tackles a behavioral problem: Most people don't take the effort to recycle or compost that little cardboard cylinder at the center of the roll. But I'm hoping Kimberly-Clark will go ahead and incorporate this technology into all their rolls, not just the "natural" brand: The people who are looking to purchase brands labeled "natural" are already more likely to recycle or compost.
The technology is actually not that revolutionary, according to a spokesperson—they're already using tubeless rolls for their corporate clients. However, what struck me in the USA Today article was that Kimberly-Clark isn't willing to discuss how they do it, saying only that it's a "special winding process." The right thing to do as a responsible company would be to share the technology with other companies in the hopes that it could quickly roll out throughout the entire industry—but maybe the open-source approach doesn't fly in the TP biz.
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