The King Who Wasted Paper

In this Sesame Street sketch, Bob sits on the stoop of 123 Sesame Street and reads The King Who Wasted Paper to a group of kids. The story is about King Wasteful the Fifth, a king who constantly wasted paper, using the paper to make into paper airplanes. Because of this, the trees in the royal forest constantly need to be chopped down and made into paper. Eventually, there is one tree left, a talking tree who hates being the last tree, because now all of the forest animals rest in that tree, and the animals also dislike having only one tree to live in.

Soon, King Wasteful needs more paper to waste, and the last tree comes in to tell the king that he's the only tree left, because the king had wasted so much paper. The birds also complain because if this tree gets made into paper, there would be no place for them to live. Eventually, King Wasteful decides to reuse the paper that he'd wasted, and the tree decides to plant acorns in the forest so that there would be more trees.

As Bob finishes the story, he says that the king never wasted paper again, and when he wrote the book that Bob read, he wrote the story on both sides of the paper.

Performers

• Jerry Nelson as King Wasteful the Fifth
• Kevin Clash as the Tree
• Martin Robinson as the Royal Paper Maker