This may fall under the heading of "this guy doesn't have enough to do" or maybe "OCD." In any case, it's something I'd been thinking about for several years.
Have you ever tried to unroll TP from a ziploc bag, only to have to remove the roll because it was squashed flat? And how did you feel about that when you were also trying to keep it dry? In the end (pardon the pun) did it do the job? Probably not.
Well, Bunky, there's an answer to that problem. Actually, several answers. You can buy a waterproof TP holder that hangs from the nearest tree and dispenses paper from the bottom. You can put a tarp over the latrine and hope to keep your unprotected TP (the squashed-flat variety) from getting too wet. No doubt you can come up with other expensive and/or halfway measures to deal with this problem. Or you can simply keep the roll from getting flattened in the first place.
If the TP were rolled around something that wouldn't collapse when packed, instead of a hollow cardboard core, it might not get flattened, thus being more likely to unroll smoothly from the plastic bag. Before each Boundary Waters trip I (used to) hand-wind toilet paper around wooden dowels. This did the trick, but it was a very tedious job, and I wondered if there's a way to streamline the process. Like so many inventions from the past - the electric light bulb, the zipper, Polarfleece, the Internet - curiosity sparked innovation, which resulted in progress. That is, I made a TP winder.
Here's the little device getting loaded with a full roll. The empty dowel is screwed onto the end of the crank, which is held by a loose-fitting pin on the other end. The paper is then taped to the dowel.
The first roll is about 2/3 finished. I wind only one-half of a full roll onto a dowel because smaller rolls are easier to pack.
After a bit of hand work to tighten them, I now have two rolls that will not flatten out when packed.
The winder breaks down small for storage.
The finshed product in use:
This is just one of many innovative creations I've come up with to solve all manner of daily nuisances. It also happens to be one of the few successful ones. Don't laugh - Edison's and DaVinci's success rates were pretty low, too.