How is paper made?
Liudmila Chernetska/Getty
Paper is all around us. There’s toilet paper and pizza boxes, wrapping paper, and receipts. Most of the paper in the U.S. is made from trees, but it can be made out of all sorts of plant material – banana peels, cotton, rice, you name it!
Join guest host Rosie duPont and co-host Arya as they explore how paper is made (spoiler: most of it comes from trees!). Then, an old paper party hat named Crumplestiltskin will share how paper recycling works. To wrap things up, they’ll hear a real stumper of a mystery sound. You won’t want to miss it!
Featured Guests:
Dr. Shri Ramaswamy is a bioproducts and biosystems engineer at the University of Minnesota. Read more about his work here.
Dr. Sanford Smith is a teaching professor in forestry and a youth extension specialist at the Pennsylvania State University. Read more about his work here.
Audio Transcript
Download transcript (PDF)
SPEAKER: You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious.
SPEAKER: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
[HUMMING]
MOLLY BLOOM: I love TP. TP is for me.
ROSE DUPONT: Molly, do you have any toilet paper? All the bathrooms and Brains On HQ are out.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, sorry about that. I needed to use all of it.
ROSE DUPONT: What? You needed to use all of the toilet paper?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, for my new favorite activity.
ROSE DUPONT: Going to the bathroom?
MOLLY BLOOM: Decorating toilet paper.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's so fun, and it makes every visit to the loo a potty party.
ROSE DUPONT: I'm so happy for you. Can I have a roll? I really have to go.
MOLLY BLOOM: Sure. Pick one that feels exciting to you. I've got tie dye, camouflage, rainbow. Oh, and I do custom toilet paper portraiture.
ROSE DUPONT: Just give me whatever.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, no, you have to pick. I want you to have a perfectly personalized potty experience.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, fine. I'll take this one.
MOLLY BLOOM: Great choice.
ROSE DUPONT: Wait, does every sheet have Gangador's face on it? Oh, no, no, no, no. How about this one?
MOLLY BLOOM: The garden variety. Oh, that's perfect for you, Rosy Rose. There's a hand-drawn flower on every sheet, and it's scented, too. Give it a whiff.
[SNIFFS]
ROSE DUPONT: I'll take it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here you go.
ROSE DUPONT: Thanks.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh, and that reminds me. I'm headed to a toilet paper crafting conference later today, and I need someone to guest host an episode for me. Would you be up for it?
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, yeah. What episode?
MOLLY BLOOM: How is paper made.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, my gosh, that's perfect. I'm obsessed with paper-- origami, papier maché, maybe even toilet paper. Who knows? I can't wait to guest host, Molly. But first, I just got to try this super special, made with love toilet paper. Love it. Love you. Gotta go.
[THEME MUSIC]
ROSE DUPONT: You're listening to Brains On from APM Studios. I'm Rosie DuPont. Since Molly Bloom is away, I have the honor of guest hosting with Arya from Acton, Massachussettes. Hi, Arya.
ARYA: Hi, Rosie.
ROSE DUPONT: So today's episode is about how paper is made. We've gotten a lot of questions about it over the years.
CHILDREN: How is paper made?
SPEAKER: How is paper made from trees?
SPEAKER: How is paper made?
SPEAKER: How is paper made out of wood?
SPEAKER: How is paper made, and how can we prevent more trees from being cut down?
ROSE DUPONT: Big thank you to Gabe, Harriett, Fay, Xiaofeng, Cassie, and Ashlyn for sending in your questions. And I got to say, it makes sense that people are curious about paper, because paper is all around us.
ARYA: There's printer paper and pizza boxes.
ROSE DUPONT: Toilet paper and wrapping paper.
ARYA: Sand paper.
ROSE DUPONT: Diapers.
ARYA: Books.
ROSE DUPONT: Wallpaper.
ARYA: Receipt.
ROSE DUPONT: And even money, honey. Arya, what kinds of activities do you use paper for at school?
ARYA: Sometimes, in books for writing stuff down.
ROSE DUPONT: Like journals?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Do you use it in art class?
ARYA: Art class. I like making crafts a lot.
ROSE DUPONT: Like what kind of crafts?
ARYA: Maybe, sometimes, I do origamies.
ROSE DUPONT: You can do origami?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Like, what does that look like?
ARYA: It's like folded pieces of paper come to 3D, sometimes.
ROSE DUPONT: That's so cool. And what kind of 3D shapes are you building?
ARYA: I can make like a swan.
ROSE DUPONT: Wow.
ARYA: Yeah. I can do a little bit of a ninja star. I can make rabbits, cats, foxes.
ROSE DUPONT: That's awesome. I love that you're so crafty. And so do you count paper planes as part of origami?
ARYA: Yes, I do, because origami is basically when you fold paper to make an object, and you fold paper to make a paper airplane, so yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, that's so cool. And how far has your best paper plane flown?
ARYA: I don't know. I did this really cool trick. So it was like my brother made one, and I made one. And then how you can open the paper airplane. So we stuffed another paper airplane in it.
ROSE DUPONT: What? Wait, how does that work?
ARYA: I don't know, but it was like-- it was really cool. So then, you threw it, and they would do a circle in the air, and it would just fall. It was really cool. So they would spread apart.
ROSE DUPONT: Wait, the two planes would separate from each other?
ARYA: They would like separate, and then they would go and maybe wind down one circle, and then they would fall.
ROSE DUPONT: That's really, really cool.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: You're making me want to go out and try origami.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: So can you name for me the things that are made out of paper that you touched today?
ARYA: Notebooks, books, regular pieces of paper, paper towels, tissue papers. I think that's pretty much it.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty similar to me. I'd say I also-- it's definitely tissue, coffee filter, pages of a pamphlet I got in the mail.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, a box for crackers, because I love crackers. And I have to say, a lot of toilet paper.
ARYA: Oh, yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: You know what, we touch it all the time, and we often don't even remember that it's paper.
ARYA: True. So there's all this different stuff made from paper, but what's paper itself made out of?
ROSE DUPONT: It's made from plants-- cellulose, to be exact, the stuff that makes plants stiff and strong. You know how when you bite into a stick of celery, it's all stringy inside?
ARYA: Well, that stringy stuff is made up of cellulose.
ROSE DUPONT: And here's a fun fact-- you can make paper out of celery.
ARYA: Whoa, cool.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, you can make paper out of almost any plant.
ARYA: Seaweed? Bananas.
ROSE DUPONT: The peels, yeah. And cotton and linen, that's what dollar bills are made of. And some toilet paper is made of bamboo, for real. Just ask Molly.
ARYA: But today, most of the paper in the world comes from wood, and wood comes from trees.
ROSE DUPONT: Let's imagine a tree. I'm picturing-- it's an oak, and it's super tall. And it's covered in rough bark, and it's got all these acorns. What kind of tree are you picturing, Arya?
ARYA: A cherry tree.
ROSE DUPONT: What does it look like?
ARYA: It's all pretty and spring, with its pink and white flowers, waiting to be bloomed into cherries.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, it sounds so pretty. I love cherry trees.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: And both of our trees are very, very strong. And unlike celery, snapping a tree trunk in half is not so easy.
ARYA: That's because the cellulose in trees is super strong.
ROSE DUPONT: Way stronger than celery. Trees need to be tough, so they don't tip over in the wind.
ARYA: But that's not all trees.
SANFORD SMITH: Trees, they have to grow very stiff, woody stems and branches to hold their leaves up to the sky, so they can get sunlight, so they can produce food for themselves.
ROSE DUPONT: That's Dr. Sanford Smith.
SANFORD SMITH: I just go by Sandy, and I work at Penn State University, where I'm a teaching professor in forestry, the art and science of tending forests.
ARYA: Sandy knows a lot about trees and how they get turned into paper.
ROSE DUPONT: And he says, inside trees, there are tons of cellulose cells.
ARYA: Cells are the tiny building blocks that make up every plant and animal.
ROSE DUPONT: And just like our muscles are made up of tiny muscle cells, tree wood is made up of tiny cellulose cells.
SANFORD SMITH: And there's thousands upon thousands of them, millions of them in any stem of a tree or branch. And they're all stuck together with a special kind of glue called lignin.
ROSE DUPONT: And these cellulose cells are really important for the tree. They're hollow inside, and they carry water and food up and down the trunk, like pipes.
SANFORD SMITH: So the trunk of a tree is actually millions upon millions of tiny little pipelines going up.
ROSE DUPONT: To make paper, you take all these pipe-shaped cellulose cells and pull them apart into tiny fibers.
ARYA: And then those fibers get turned into paper.
ROSE DUPONT: But how does it all work? Well, let's imagine for a minute that we're a tiny cellulose cell.
ARYA: One minute, we're helping move water up and down inside a tree.
CELLULOSE CELL: I just love being a little cellulose cell.
SANFORD SMITH: In the next minute, the tree has been cut down and sent to a paper mill.
CELLULOSE CELL: Forest floor, here I come.
ROSE DUPONT: The tree's branches get cut off, and the trunk is loaded onto a truck that heads to a paper mill.
ARYA: And then when it gets there, the trunk is debarked.
ROSE DUPONT: Debarking is when you rub the bark off the tree trunk in a tumbling machine.
CELLULOSE CELL: Woohoo, what a ride.
ROSE DUPONT: Next, the tree is chopped into wood chips and loaded into a big tank called a digester. Here's tree expert Sandy again.
SANFORD SMITH: The digester has lots of chemicals in it, and it's heated up with steam to very high temperatures, and those chips break down and get very soft.
ROSE DUPONT: Remember how Sandy said the cellulose cells in trees are stuck together with a natural glue called lignin? Well, when you cook the wood chips, the lignin glue separates from the cellulose cells.
SANFORD SMITH: And that lignin is dissolved and taken away. And most of that lignin goes into the power plant of the mill. They burn that to create energy.
ARYA: As the wood chips cook, the cellulose cells fall apart into little strands of fiber.
ROSE DUPONT: And what you're left with is a soupy liquid called pulp, which is made of liquid and lots of little cellulose fibers.
ARYA: The cellulose fibers in Pulp are very tiny, thinner than human hair.
ROSE DUPONT: And the pulp soup, it's mostly liquid.
CELLULOSE CELL: Scrub a dub dub, cellulose in a tub.
ROSE DUPONT: So there's a lot of liquid to get rid of. And they do that in the paper machine. Sandy says these machines are huge.
SANFORD SMITH: So paper machines are really a series of machines that are all joined together, and they're longer than a football field. They're huge. And at the wet end of the paper machine, that's where you're putting in the wet fiber. It goes in there, and it starts going across a screen, a large screen, like a house screen, and it spreads out.
ARYA: And these big screens filled with pulp start moving fast, about 70 miles an hour.
CELLULOSE CELL: Wohoo. Life is a highway. I want to ride it all night long.
ROSE DUPONT: They run through a bunch of different rollers and heaters. By the time the screens filled with pulp reached the other end of the paper machine, the cellulose fibers in the pulp have been dried out and pressed flat into--
ARYA: Paper.
SANFORD SMITH: The whole process is going so fast, and these rolls of paper come out at the end, and they're huge. They're huge. They're several tons thickness.
ROSE DUPONT: These rolls of paper get cut up or shipped out to be turned into other paper products.
ARYA: And that little cellulose fiber is off on a new adventure.
CELLULOSE CELL: Tata for now. I hope I become an envelope, full of surprises, or maybe a paper doll with a killer wardrobe. No, I want to be a paper snowflake.
ROSE DUPONT: Have fun, fiber friend. There are so many ways to play with paper that I haven't even thought of yet. Listeners, we asked you to send us pictures of paper creations you've made, and you sent us a ton of amazing things. We've posted pictures of your work on our Brains On Universe social media channels. Ask your parents to show you. OK, we're going to talk more about paper in a bit, but first, it's time for the--
ARYA: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
ROSE DUPONT: All right, Arya, are you ready for the mystery sound?
ARYA: Yes.
ROSE DUPONT: Great. OK, great. Here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ROSE DUPONT: OK, Arya, what do you think it is?
ARYA: I think it might be someone stapling something.
ROSE DUPONT: Amazing. Do you want to hear it one more time?
ARYA: Yes, please.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ROSE DUPONT: Has your answer changed, or is it the same?
ARYA: No, I think it's the same.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, so stapling paper?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, great. Well, we will hear the answer after the credits at the end of the show. We're making an episode all about Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. And it got us wondering. If planets had personalities, what would they be like, and what would their nicknames be?
Maybe Jupiter would be super tough and go by Jupiter, or Mercury would be tiny and spunky and go by Mini Merc. If you could give a nickname to any planet in our solar system, what would it be, and why? What do you think, Arya?
ARYA: Maybe I would name Saturn, the diamond ring planet. Because Saturn already has a ring around it. And why not add a diamond?
ROSE DUPONT: That's so cute. I love it. That's such a good nickname.
ARYA: Thank you.
ROSE DUPONT: Well, listeners, record your planet nickname, and send it to us at brainson.org/contact. While you're there, send us your mystery sounds, drawings, and questions.
ARYA: Like this one.
SPEAKER 7: What happens in your body when you get sick?
ROSE DUPONT: You can find answers to questions, like this, on the Moment of Um podcast, a short dose of facts and fun every weekday. Find Moment of Um and more at brainson.org.
ARYA: So keep listening.
ROSE DUPONT: Brains On Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Brains On, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
SPEAKER: Brains On. I'm their biggest fan. I also love Forever Ago, a fun history podcast for the whole family. Listen, I will play you Forever Ago now you will love.
SPEAKER: Homing pigeons were a speedy way to deliver messages to military bases. Some pigeons could fly hundreds of miles in a single day, zipping through the air as fast as 60 miles per hour.
SPEAKER: That's so fast for such a tiny bird.
SPEAKER: These pigeons delivered life-saving messages throughout the war.
SPEAKER: Where did the signal go? Must find Forever Ago now.
SPEAKER: Listen to Forever Ago wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER: Brains On.
ARYA: You're listening to Brains On. I'm Arya.
ROSE DUPONT: And I'm Rosie. And today, we're talking about paper and how it's made.
ARYA: We learned that paper is made out of cellulose, the stuff that makes plants stiff and strong.
ROSE DUPONT: In the United States, most paper is made out of trees.
ARYA: But in other parts of the world, they don't have as many trees. So what do they do?
ROSE DUPONT: We spoke with Shri Ramaswamy. He's a professor in bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. He knows all about things made from renewable resources. These are things in nature that can be replaced if we use them, like trees.
ARYA: He says, in other parts of the world, when they don't have a lot of trees, they use the plants they do have a lot of.
SHRI RAMASWAMY: Bamboo is a resource that is available in some parts of the world, so places in Asia. It is an option. The alternative are similar to bamboo. In South America, they actually use sugarcane bagasse, which is a residue after you take out the sugar from sugar cane. And that can be also used in making paper.
ARYA: Whoa, sugar cane paper. Sweet.
ROSE DUPONT: And what's cool about that sugar cane paper is that it's made from materials left over after you turn sugarcane into sugar crystals. So it's stuff that, otherwise, would have been trash or burned for energy, but instead, it's paper.
ARYA: Very Earth-friendly.
ROSE DUPONT: Exactly. But even in the United States, the paper industry is good about replanting new trees after they cut old ones down.
ARYA: And trees says paper that isn't recycled can easily break down and become part of nature again.
SHRI RAMASWAMY: Unlike many other materials that we use, many of the plastic that we use, for example, paper is actually is coming from a renewable resource, and it is recyclable. It's reusable. So from that point of view, I don't think one has to feel that, oh, I'm using papers. I'm actually affecting the environment in a negative way, right? At least in the US.
SPEAKER: Brains On.
ARYA: rosie want to hear a cool fact?
ROSE DUPONT: Is kale an excellent source of dietary fiber? Of course.
ARYA: In the United States, we recycle over 60% of all paper and around 90% of all cardboard.
ROSE DUPONT: Go, us.
ARYA: We rock.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: I remember the first time I was recycled, like it was yesterday.
ROSE DUPONT: Who said that?
ARYA: I think it was that old birthday party hat on the ground?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Party hat, construction paper, postcard from beautiful downtown, Boise, Idaho. I've been a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, it's all the same. I'm paper. My name is Crumplestiltskin, Crumple for short. Unlike my life, which has been so, so long.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, so you've been recycled? We'd love to hear about it.
ARYA: Yeah, I've recycled paper all my life, but I've never gotten to hear what happens from a piece of paper's point of view. This is neat.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Neat? You think being turned into an endless array of papers and paper-related products, including, one time, a postcard, a.k.a. the city of trees, is neat?
ARYA: Yeah.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Great, because it is neat, very neat. I'm truly blessed.
ROSE DUPONT: Truly. So how does it work?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Well, Rosie, you ever make chocolate chip cookies from scratch on a cold winter day?
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, is a recycling paper like that?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Not at all. You see, when you drop that paper in a bin with all your other recyclables, it sets off on a journey that is both long and winding, not unlike the Boise River, from which scenic gets its name. By the way, did I mention I was once recycled into a postcard for beautiful Boise, Idaho?
ARYA: Yes, you did, several times.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: You never forget your first recycle. Anyway, it all starts when the used paper is taken to a place called a materials recovery facility. I get giddy just thinking about it. We get to ride this fun little conveyor belt, and plastic and paper and metals all get sorted by machines. Sometimes, workers pick out all the small stuff that shouldn't be in there. One time, I saw a toilet seat in the mix.
ROSE DUPONT: That's definitely not a recyclable.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: I know. So, wow.
ROSE DUPONT: So after everything is sorted, then what happens?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Well, Rosie, us paper pieces are weighed and packed and shipped off to our next destination. Another paper mill. Can you believe it? You probably can, because it's very believable.
ARYA: It is.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: The paper mill, oh, boy, as people would say, this is where the magic happens. At the paper mill, I mean, not Boise. The magic happens there, too, but it's much more of a community-built feeling of belonging. At the paper mill, the magic is turning old paper into new.
ROSE DUPONT: That's pretty impressive, too. Tell me, Crumple, how exactly do they take all those different kinds of paper with different colors and inks and make them new again?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: First, we're shredded into little pieces, then they dump water and chemicals on those pieces to turn them into soupy pulp, stuff like staples and paper clips and taping tape get filtered out, then more chemicals and air bubbles. They help get rid of all the inks.
ARYA: So basically, the old used paper gets turned back into a pulp, just like how trees are turned into a pulp to make new paper?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Yeppers. And once you have your pulp, all you have to do is make it into a sheet, flatten it, and dry it. Then it's ready to be something new, like a carrier for coffee cups, a pamphlet, or if you're lucky, a postcard, showing off the many scenic forest surroundings the city of Boise has to offer. It's what every scrap of paper dreams of, but I'm afraid my recycling days are almost over.
ARYA: Don't worry, Mr. Old Paper Guy, we'll still be sure to recycle you after this.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: It's not that. It's just, at some point, the fibers in recycled paper are just too worn out to be reused. And my fibers are old. Most paper can be recycled five to seven times, and this birthday hat is my seventh recycle. I'm not sure if I've got an eighth one in me, but you know what, you said you believe in me.
ROSE DUPONT: We did.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: That's good enough for me. I'll give it a shot. Throw me in that recycling bin. Let's see if old Crumple has one more life left in him. This one's for Boise.
ROSE DUPONT: Paper is made from something found in plants called cellulose.
ARYA: In the US, we use trees to make paper, but other countries use things, like bamboo.
ROSE DUPONT: We turn the plants into pulp and then machines dry it and make paper.
ARYA: When we recycle a piece of paper, it's turned back into pulp and made into paper again.
ROSE DUPONT: And that's it for this episode of Brains On.
ARYA: This episode was written by--
ROSE DUPONT: Rosie DuPont--
ARYA: And--
SANDEN TOTTEN: Sanden Totten.
ROSE DUPONT: It was edited by--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
ROSE DUPONT: Engineering help from Gary O'Keefe and Jim Sullivan, with sound design by--
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
ROSE DUPONT: And fact-checking by--
JESS MILLER: Jess Miller.
ROSE DUPONT: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
ARYA: We had production help from the rest of the Brains On Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly Bloom, Anna Goldfield.
NICO GONZALEZ WHISTLER: Nico Gonzalez Whistler.
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
LAUREN HUMPHREY: Lauren Humphrey.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
ARYA: And--
ARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
ROSE DUPONT: Beth Perlman is our executive producer, and executives-in-charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special thanks to Sandipan Sarma and Archana Upadhyay.
ARYA: Brains On is a non-profit public radio program.
ROSE DUPONT: There are lots of ways to support the show. Subscribe to Brains On Universe on YouTube, where you can watch animated versions of some of your favorite episodes, or head to brainson.org.
ARYA: While you're there, you can send us mystery sounds, drawings, and questions.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, Arya, are you ready to listen to the mystery sound again?
ARYA: Yep.
ROSE DUPONT: All right, here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK, so you said it was stapling paper before. Is that you're still your same guess?
ARYA: No, because now I feel like people-- it's like footsteps walking.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh.
ARYA: I just really don't know.
ROSE DUPONT: Do you want to hear it one last time?
ARYA: Yes, please.
ROSE DUPONT: Yes. Here comes.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ARYA: No, it's definitely stapling paper. I can hear the paper getting stapled together, and I can hear them moving it.
ROSE DUPONT: OK. Fantastic guess. Let's hear the reveal.
ARYA: OK.
ELLIE: My name is Ellie, and I live in Monroe, Louisiana. And that was the sound of me cutting paper.
ARYA: Oh.
ROSE DUPONT: Cutting paper. So close. Stapling paper is like almost like cutting paper, because you're still punching holes in paper.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: I think you get-- you definitely get partial credit.
ARYA: OK.
ROSE DUPONT: Cutting paper.
ARYA: It must be with one of those zig style scissors. They have designs on them. And when you cut paper with them, it makes like that kind of sound.
ROSE DUPONT: They almost look like the scissors themselves look like alligators.
ARYA: Yeah. Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah. Yeah, those are cool.
[CUTTING PAPER]
Now it's time for the Brains Honor Roll. These are the incredible kids who keep the show going with their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
We'll be back next week with an episode all about down syndrome.
ARYA: Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
[HUMMING]
MOLLY BLOOM: I love TP. TP is for me.
ROSE DUPONT: Molly, do you have any toilet paper? All the bathrooms and Brains On HQ are out.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, sorry about that. I needed to use all of it.
ROSE DUPONT: What? You needed to use all of the toilet paper?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, for my new favorite activity.
ROSE DUPONT: Going to the bathroom?
MOLLY BLOOM: Decorating toilet paper.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: It's so fun, and it makes every visit to the loo a potty party.
ROSE DUPONT: I'm so happy for you. Can I have a roll? I really have to go.
MOLLY BLOOM: Sure. Pick one that feels exciting to you. I've got tie dye, camouflage, rainbow. Oh, and I do custom toilet paper portraiture.
ROSE DUPONT: Just give me whatever.
MOLLY BLOOM: No, no, you have to pick. I want you to have a perfectly personalized potty experience.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, fine. I'll take this one.
MOLLY BLOOM: Great choice.
ROSE DUPONT: Wait, does every sheet have Gangador's face on it? Oh, no, no, no, no. How about this one?
MOLLY BLOOM: The garden variety. Oh, that's perfect for you, Rosy Rose. There's a hand-drawn flower on every sheet, and it's scented, too. Give it a whiff.
[SNIFFS]
ROSE DUPONT: I'll take it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here you go.
ROSE DUPONT: Thanks.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh, and that reminds me. I'm headed to a toilet paper crafting conference later today, and I need someone to guest host an episode for me. Would you be up for it?
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, yeah. What episode?
MOLLY BLOOM: How is paper made.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, my gosh, that's perfect. I'm obsessed with paper-- origami, papier maché, maybe even toilet paper. Who knows? I can't wait to guest host, Molly. But first, I just got to try this super special, made with love toilet paper. Love it. Love you. Gotta go.
[THEME MUSIC]
ROSE DUPONT: You're listening to Brains On from APM Studios. I'm Rosie DuPont. Since Molly Bloom is away, I have the honor of guest hosting with Arya from Acton, Massachussettes. Hi, Arya.
ARYA: Hi, Rosie.
ROSE DUPONT: So today's episode is about how paper is made. We've gotten a lot of questions about it over the years.
CHILDREN: How is paper made?
SPEAKER: How is paper made from trees?
SPEAKER: How is paper made?
SPEAKER: How is paper made out of wood?
SPEAKER: How is paper made, and how can we prevent more trees from being cut down?
ROSE DUPONT: Big thank you to Gabe, Harriett, Fay, Xiaofeng, Cassie, and Ashlyn for sending in your questions. And I got to say, it makes sense that people are curious about paper, because paper is all around us.
ARYA: There's printer paper and pizza boxes.
ROSE DUPONT: Toilet paper and wrapping paper.
ARYA: Sand paper.
ROSE DUPONT: Diapers.
ARYA: Books.
ROSE DUPONT: Wallpaper.
ARYA: Receipt.
ROSE DUPONT: And even money, honey. Arya, what kinds of activities do you use paper for at school?
ARYA: Sometimes, in books for writing stuff down.
ROSE DUPONT: Like journals?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Do you use it in art class?
ARYA: Art class. I like making crafts a lot.
ROSE DUPONT: Like what kind of crafts?
ARYA: Maybe, sometimes, I do origamies.
ROSE DUPONT: You can do origami?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Like, what does that look like?
ARYA: It's like folded pieces of paper come to 3D, sometimes.
ROSE DUPONT: That's so cool. And what kind of 3D shapes are you building?
ARYA: I can make like a swan.
ROSE DUPONT: Wow.
ARYA: Yeah. I can do a little bit of a ninja star. I can make rabbits, cats, foxes.
ROSE DUPONT: That's awesome. I love that you're so crafty. And so do you count paper planes as part of origami?
ARYA: Yes, I do, because origami is basically when you fold paper to make an object, and you fold paper to make a paper airplane, so yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, that's so cool. And how far has your best paper plane flown?
ARYA: I don't know. I did this really cool trick. So it was like my brother made one, and I made one. And then how you can open the paper airplane. So we stuffed another paper airplane in it.
ROSE DUPONT: What? Wait, how does that work?
ARYA: I don't know, but it was like-- it was really cool. So then, you threw it, and they would do a circle in the air, and it would just fall. It was really cool. So they would spread apart.
ROSE DUPONT: Wait, the two planes would separate from each other?
ARYA: They would like separate, and then they would go and maybe wind down one circle, and then they would fall.
ROSE DUPONT: That's really, really cool.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: You're making me want to go out and try origami.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: So can you name for me the things that are made out of paper that you touched today?
ARYA: Notebooks, books, regular pieces of paper, paper towels, tissue papers. I think that's pretty much it.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty similar to me. I'd say I also-- it's definitely tissue, coffee filter, pages of a pamphlet I got in the mail.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, a box for crackers, because I love crackers. And I have to say, a lot of toilet paper.
ARYA: Oh, yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: You know what, we touch it all the time, and we often don't even remember that it's paper.
ARYA: True. So there's all this different stuff made from paper, but what's paper itself made out of?
ROSE DUPONT: It's made from plants-- cellulose, to be exact, the stuff that makes plants stiff and strong. You know how when you bite into a stick of celery, it's all stringy inside?
ARYA: Well, that stringy stuff is made up of cellulose.
ROSE DUPONT: And here's a fun fact-- you can make paper out of celery.
ARYA: Whoa, cool.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, you can make paper out of almost any plant.
ARYA: Seaweed? Bananas.
ROSE DUPONT: The peels, yeah. And cotton and linen, that's what dollar bills are made of. And some toilet paper is made of bamboo, for real. Just ask Molly.
ARYA: But today, most of the paper in the world comes from wood, and wood comes from trees.
ROSE DUPONT: Let's imagine a tree. I'm picturing-- it's an oak, and it's super tall. And it's covered in rough bark, and it's got all these acorns. What kind of tree are you picturing, Arya?
ARYA: A cherry tree.
ROSE DUPONT: What does it look like?
ARYA: It's all pretty and spring, with its pink and white flowers, waiting to be bloomed into cherries.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, it sounds so pretty. I love cherry trees.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: And both of our trees are very, very strong. And unlike celery, snapping a tree trunk in half is not so easy.
ARYA: That's because the cellulose in trees is super strong.
ROSE DUPONT: Way stronger than celery. Trees need to be tough, so they don't tip over in the wind.
ARYA: But that's not all trees.
SANFORD SMITH: Trees, they have to grow very stiff, woody stems and branches to hold their leaves up to the sky, so they can get sunlight, so they can produce food for themselves.
ROSE DUPONT: That's Dr. Sanford Smith.
SANFORD SMITH: I just go by Sandy, and I work at Penn State University, where I'm a teaching professor in forestry, the art and science of tending forests.
ARYA: Sandy knows a lot about trees and how they get turned into paper.
ROSE DUPONT: And he says, inside trees, there are tons of cellulose cells.
ARYA: Cells are the tiny building blocks that make up every plant and animal.
ROSE DUPONT: And just like our muscles are made up of tiny muscle cells, tree wood is made up of tiny cellulose cells.
SANFORD SMITH: And there's thousands upon thousands of them, millions of them in any stem of a tree or branch. And they're all stuck together with a special kind of glue called lignin.
ROSE DUPONT: And these cellulose cells are really important for the tree. They're hollow inside, and they carry water and food up and down the trunk, like pipes.
SANFORD SMITH: So the trunk of a tree is actually millions upon millions of tiny little pipelines going up.
ROSE DUPONT: To make paper, you take all these pipe-shaped cellulose cells and pull them apart into tiny fibers.
ARYA: And then those fibers get turned into paper.
ROSE DUPONT: But how does it all work? Well, let's imagine for a minute that we're a tiny cellulose cell.
ARYA: One minute, we're helping move water up and down inside a tree.
CELLULOSE CELL: I just love being a little cellulose cell.
SANFORD SMITH: In the next minute, the tree has been cut down and sent to a paper mill.
CELLULOSE CELL: Forest floor, here I come.
ROSE DUPONT: The tree's branches get cut off, and the trunk is loaded onto a truck that heads to a paper mill.
ARYA: And then when it gets there, the trunk is debarked.
ROSE DUPONT: Debarking is when you rub the bark off the tree trunk in a tumbling machine.
CELLULOSE CELL: Woohoo, what a ride.
ROSE DUPONT: Next, the tree is chopped into wood chips and loaded into a big tank called a digester. Here's tree expert Sandy again.
SANFORD SMITH: The digester has lots of chemicals in it, and it's heated up with steam to very high temperatures, and those chips break down and get very soft.
ROSE DUPONT: Remember how Sandy said the cellulose cells in trees are stuck together with a natural glue called lignin? Well, when you cook the wood chips, the lignin glue separates from the cellulose cells.
SANFORD SMITH: And that lignin is dissolved and taken away. And most of that lignin goes into the power plant of the mill. They burn that to create energy.
ARYA: As the wood chips cook, the cellulose cells fall apart into little strands of fiber.
ROSE DUPONT: And what you're left with is a soupy liquid called pulp, which is made of liquid and lots of little cellulose fibers.
ARYA: The cellulose fibers in Pulp are very tiny, thinner than human hair.
ROSE DUPONT: And the pulp soup, it's mostly liquid.
CELLULOSE CELL: Scrub a dub dub, cellulose in a tub.
ROSE DUPONT: So there's a lot of liquid to get rid of. And they do that in the paper machine. Sandy says these machines are huge.
SANFORD SMITH: So paper machines are really a series of machines that are all joined together, and they're longer than a football field. They're huge. And at the wet end of the paper machine, that's where you're putting in the wet fiber. It goes in there, and it starts going across a screen, a large screen, like a house screen, and it spreads out.
ARYA: And these big screens filled with pulp start moving fast, about 70 miles an hour.
CELLULOSE CELL: Wohoo. Life is a highway. I want to ride it all night long.
ROSE DUPONT: They run through a bunch of different rollers and heaters. By the time the screens filled with pulp reached the other end of the paper machine, the cellulose fibers in the pulp have been dried out and pressed flat into--
ARYA: Paper.
SANFORD SMITH: The whole process is going so fast, and these rolls of paper come out at the end, and they're huge. They're huge. They're several tons thickness.
ROSE DUPONT: These rolls of paper get cut up or shipped out to be turned into other paper products.
ARYA: And that little cellulose fiber is off on a new adventure.
CELLULOSE CELL: Tata for now. I hope I become an envelope, full of surprises, or maybe a paper doll with a killer wardrobe. No, I want to be a paper snowflake.
ROSE DUPONT: Have fun, fiber friend. There are so many ways to play with paper that I haven't even thought of yet. Listeners, we asked you to send us pictures of paper creations you've made, and you sent us a ton of amazing things. We've posted pictures of your work on our Brains On Universe social media channels. Ask your parents to show you. OK, we're going to talk more about paper in a bit, but first, it's time for the--
ARYA: (WHISPERING) Mystery sound.
ROSE DUPONT: All right, Arya, are you ready for the mystery sound?
ARYA: Yes.
ROSE DUPONT: Great. OK, great. Here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ROSE DUPONT: OK, Arya, what do you think it is?
ARYA: I think it might be someone stapling something.
ROSE DUPONT: Amazing. Do you want to hear it one more time?
ARYA: Yes, please.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ROSE DUPONT: Has your answer changed, or is it the same?
ARYA: No, I think it's the same.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, so stapling paper?
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, great. Well, we will hear the answer after the credits at the end of the show. We're making an episode all about Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. And it got us wondering. If planets had personalities, what would they be like, and what would their nicknames be?
Maybe Jupiter would be super tough and go by Jupiter, or Mercury would be tiny and spunky and go by Mini Merc. If you could give a nickname to any planet in our solar system, what would it be, and why? What do you think, Arya?
ARYA: Maybe I would name Saturn, the diamond ring planet. Because Saturn already has a ring around it. And why not add a diamond?
ROSE DUPONT: That's so cute. I love it. That's such a good nickname.
ARYA: Thank you.
ROSE DUPONT: Well, listeners, record your planet nickname, and send it to us at brainson.org/contact. While you're there, send us your mystery sounds, drawings, and questions.
ARYA: Like this one.
SPEAKER 7: What happens in your body when you get sick?
ROSE DUPONT: You can find answers to questions, like this, on the Moment of Um podcast, a short dose of facts and fun every weekday. Find Moment of Um and more at brainson.org.
ARYA: So keep listening.
ROSE DUPONT: Brains On Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Brains On, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
SPEAKER: Brains On. I'm their biggest fan. I also love Forever Ago, a fun history podcast for the whole family. Listen, I will play you Forever Ago now you will love.
SPEAKER: Homing pigeons were a speedy way to deliver messages to military bases. Some pigeons could fly hundreds of miles in a single day, zipping through the air as fast as 60 miles per hour.
SPEAKER: That's so fast for such a tiny bird.
SPEAKER: These pigeons delivered life-saving messages throughout the war.
SPEAKER: Where did the signal go? Must find Forever Ago now.
SPEAKER: Listen to Forever Ago wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER: Brains On.
ARYA: You're listening to Brains On. I'm Arya.
ROSE DUPONT: And I'm Rosie. And today, we're talking about paper and how it's made.
ARYA: We learned that paper is made out of cellulose, the stuff that makes plants stiff and strong.
ROSE DUPONT: In the United States, most paper is made out of trees.
ARYA: But in other parts of the world, they don't have as many trees. So what do they do?
ROSE DUPONT: We spoke with Shri Ramaswamy. He's a professor in bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. He knows all about things made from renewable resources. These are things in nature that can be replaced if we use them, like trees.
ARYA: He says, in other parts of the world, when they don't have a lot of trees, they use the plants they do have a lot of.
SHRI RAMASWAMY: Bamboo is a resource that is available in some parts of the world, so places in Asia. It is an option. The alternative are similar to bamboo. In South America, they actually use sugarcane bagasse, which is a residue after you take out the sugar from sugar cane. And that can be also used in making paper.
ARYA: Whoa, sugar cane paper. Sweet.
ROSE DUPONT: And what's cool about that sugar cane paper is that it's made from materials left over after you turn sugarcane into sugar crystals. So it's stuff that, otherwise, would have been trash or burned for energy, but instead, it's paper.
ARYA: Very Earth-friendly.
ROSE DUPONT: Exactly. But even in the United States, the paper industry is good about replanting new trees after they cut old ones down.
ARYA: And trees says paper that isn't recycled can easily break down and become part of nature again.
SHRI RAMASWAMY: Unlike many other materials that we use, many of the plastic that we use, for example, paper is actually is coming from a renewable resource, and it is recyclable. It's reusable. So from that point of view, I don't think one has to feel that, oh, I'm using papers. I'm actually affecting the environment in a negative way, right? At least in the US.
SPEAKER: Brains On.
ARYA: rosie want to hear a cool fact?
ROSE DUPONT: Is kale an excellent source of dietary fiber? Of course.
ARYA: In the United States, we recycle over 60% of all paper and around 90% of all cardboard.
ROSE DUPONT: Go, us.
ARYA: We rock.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: I remember the first time I was recycled, like it was yesterday.
ROSE DUPONT: Who said that?
ARYA: I think it was that old birthday party hat on the ground?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Party hat, construction paper, postcard from beautiful downtown, Boise, Idaho. I've been a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, it's all the same. I'm paper. My name is Crumplestiltskin, Crumple for short. Unlike my life, which has been so, so long.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh, so you've been recycled? We'd love to hear about it.
ARYA: Yeah, I've recycled paper all my life, but I've never gotten to hear what happens from a piece of paper's point of view. This is neat.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Neat? You think being turned into an endless array of papers and paper-related products, including, one time, a postcard, a.k.a. the city of trees, is neat?
ARYA: Yeah.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Great, because it is neat, very neat. I'm truly blessed.
ROSE DUPONT: Truly. So how does it work?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Well, Rosie, you ever make chocolate chip cookies from scratch on a cold winter day?
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah, is a recycling paper like that?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Not at all. You see, when you drop that paper in a bin with all your other recyclables, it sets off on a journey that is both long and winding, not unlike the Boise River, from which scenic gets its name. By the way, did I mention I was once recycled into a postcard for beautiful Boise, Idaho?
ARYA: Yes, you did, several times.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: You never forget your first recycle. Anyway, it all starts when the used paper is taken to a place called a materials recovery facility. I get giddy just thinking about it. We get to ride this fun little conveyor belt, and plastic and paper and metals all get sorted by machines. Sometimes, workers pick out all the small stuff that shouldn't be in there. One time, I saw a toilet seat in the mix.
ROSE DUPONT: That's definitely not a recyclable.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: I know. So, wow.
ROSE DUPONT: So after everything is sorted, then what happens?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Well, Rosie, us paper pieces are weighed and packed and shipped off to our next destination. Another paper mill. Can you believe it? You probably can, because it's very believable.
ARYA: It is.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: The paper mill, oh, boy, as people would say, this is where the magic happens. At the paper mill, I mean, not Boise. The magic happens there, too, but it's much more of a community-built feeling of belonging. At the paper mill, the magic is turning old paper into new.
ROSE DUPONT: That's pretty impressive, too. Tell me, Crumple, how exactly do they take all those different kinds of paper with different colors and inks and make them new again?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: First, we're shredded into little pieces, then they dump water and chemicals on those pieces to turn them into soupy pulp, stuff like staples and paper clips and taping tape get filtered out, then more chemicals and air bubbles. They help get rid of all the inks.
ARYA: So basically, the old used paper gets turned back into a pulp, just like how trees are turned into a pulp to make new paper?
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: Yeppers. And once you have your pulp, all you have to do is make it into a sheet, flatten it, and dry it. Then it's ready to be something new, like a carrier for coffee cups, a pamphlet, or if you're lucky, a postcard, showing off the many scenic forest surroundings the city of Boise has to offer. It's what every scrap of paper dreams of, but I'm afraid my recycling days are almost over.
ARYA: Don't worry, Mr. Old Paper Guy, we'll still be sure to recycle you after this.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: It's not that. It's just, at some point, the fibers in recycled paper are just too worn out to be reused. And my fibers are old. Most paper can be recycled five to seven times, and this birthday hat is my seventh recycle. I'm not sure if I've got an eighth one in me, but you know what, you said you believe in me.
ROSE DUPONT: We did.
CRUMPLESTILTSKIN: That's good enough for me. I'll give it a shot. Throw me in that recycling bin. Let's see if old Crumple has one more life left in him. This one's for Boise.
ROSE DUPONT: Paper is made from something found in plants called cellulose.
ARYA: In the US, we use trees to make paper, but other countries use things, like bamboo.
ROSE DUPONT: We turn the plants into pulp and then machines dry it and make paper.
ARYA: When we recycle a piece of paper, it's turned back into pulp and made into paper again.
ROSE DUPONT: And that's it for this episode of Brains On.
ARYA: This episode was written by--
ROSE DUPONT: Rosie DuPont--
ARYA: And--
SANDEN TOTTEN: Sanden Totten.
ROSE DUPONT: It was edited by--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
ROSE DUPONT: Engineering help from Gary O'Keefe and Jim Sullivan, with sound design by--
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
ROSE DUPONT: And fact-checking by--
JESS MILLER: Jess Miller.
ROSE DUPONT: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
ARYA: We had production help from the rest of the Brains On Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly Bloom, Anna Goldfield.
NICO GONZALEZ WHISTLER: Nico Gonzalez Whistler.
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
LAUREN HUMPHREY: Lauren Humphrey.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
ARYA: And--
ARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
ROSE DUPONT: Beth Perlman is our executive producer, and executives-in-charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special thanks to Sandipan Sarma and Archana Upadhyay.
ARYA: Brains On is a non-profit public radio program.
ROSE DUPONT: There are lots of ways to support the show. Subscribe to Brains On Universe on YouTube, where you can watch animated versions of some of your favorite episodes, or head to brainson.org.
ARYA: While you're there, you can send us mystery sounds, drawings, and questions.
ROSE DUPONT: OK, Arya, are you ready to listen to the mystery sound again?
ARYA: Yep.
ROSE DUPONT: All right, here it is.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
OK, so you said it was stapling paper before. Is that you're still your same guess?
ARYA: No, because now I feel like people-- it's like footsteps walking.
ROSE DUPONT: Oh.
ARYA: I just really don't know.
ROSE DUPONT: Do you want to hear it one last time?
ARYA: Yes, please.
ROSE DUPONT: Yes. Here comes.
[MYSTERY SOUND]
ARYA: No, it's definitely stapling paper. I can hear the paper getting stapled together, and I can hear them moving it.
ROSE DUPONT: OK. Fantastic guess. Let's hear the reveal.
ARYA: OK.
ELLIE: My name is Ellie, and I live in Monroe, Louisiana. And that was the sound of me cutting paper.
ARYA: Oh.
ROSE DUPONT: Cutting paper. So close. Stapling paper is like almost like cutting paper, because you're still punching holes in paper.
ARYA: Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: I think you get-- you definitely get partial credit.
ARYA: OK.
ROSE DUPONT: Cutting paper.
ARYA: It must be with one of those zig style scissors. They have designs on them. And when you cut paper with them, it makes like that kind of sound.
ROSE DUPONT: They almost look like the scissors themselves look like alligators.
ARYA: Yeah. Yeah.
ROSE DUPONT: Yeah. Yeah, those are cool.
[CUTTING PAPER]
Now it's time for the Brains Honor Roll. These are the incredible kids who keep the show going with their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
We'll be back next week with an episode all about down syndrome.
ARYA: Thanks for listening.
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