On a roll with germ of an idea

Date: February 11 2006

FEELING seedy while on a camping trek or an outback odyssey may never be the same again. A NSW inventor has designed a seed impregnated toilet paper that she believes will revolutionise the process of being at one with nature.

Joy Kogias says her "Enviro-roll land and sea tissues" mean those in the act of doing the necessary will no longer have to worry about the effect of their deposits on the environment.

The idea, in a nutshell, is to propagate as you defecate.

"As I was having my morning ablutions I thought, 'gee, I should be taking a nice native plant out in the bush with me when I'm doing this'," she said. "This is like giving mother nature a helping hand. You can't feel the seed; it's just like normal toilet paper."

Kogias first had the idea of combining seeds with toilet tissue in 1998. Eight years later, she holds a patent for the seed-impregnated tissue and a patent is pending for a loo roll with minerals and trace elements that will feed phytoplankton if used at sea, or soil micro-organisms if used on land.

Kogias expects to hear from a toilet paper manufacturer next week; if it doesn't take up her idea, she anticipates being ready to produce them herself within six months for sale locally in the Kempsey area.

Might not the unsuspecting camper be spreading weeds?

"It's going to be 100 per cent endemic; we're not going to be planting stuff that's not normally grown there [around Kempsey]," she said.