It takes something pretty special to win top prize at the Monozukuri Nippon awards.  The following innovation from Japanese company Oriental recently took out this honour for their White Goat office paper recycler.  The clever twist with this machine is that it converts shredded paper (of course, it has a built-in shredder) into recycled toilet rolls.

All the user needs to do is feed the White Goat with paper, add water and the rest of the process is entirely automated. It takes approximately 40 a4 pages of office paper to make up one toilet roll and the machine moves at a steady pace of two rolls per hour.  The company claim that this saves 60 cedar trees per year; but to have a White Goat of your own you’d better start saving your pennies… upon release they will be running out the door at the bargain price of $100,000.   

Perhaps this is a small price to pay, for the pleasure of expressing your ultimate disdain to certain unwanted office documents.

Learn about the White Goat at Oriental (Japanese language, Google is your friend).

We first heard about this at PopSci, where you can also see a video of the machine in action.