What you see here is not Halloween vandalism. This toilet paper is used to repair roads in Littleton, Colorado. City repair crews fill cracks in the asphalt with tar, and then lay the toilet paper over top. The scheme will be used for 120 streets slated to have their cracks filled.
The TP, applied with a paint roller, absorbs the oil from freshly laid tar as it dries, keeping it from sticking to people’s shoes or car and bike tires. With the paper’s protective abilities, asphalt isn’t tracked all over the city or splattered on wheel wells. And the biodegradable paper breaks down and disappears in a matter of days.
“Since my car is new, I didn’t want it to get damaged,” Worthington said.
Kelli Narde, a spokeswoman for Littleton, said the real benefit of using toilet paper is that it allows traffic to retake the road right after a crack is filled.
“It means traffic has better access because we don’t have to close down a street to do the sealing,” she said.
There are industrial products sold for exactly this purpose, but single-ply toilet paper does just as well for a fraction of the cost. Double-ply will not work, because the top layer blows away into yards. It's an idea that may spread to a community near you. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: City of Littleton)