Elephant Poo Paper
Posted on 05 June 2007, at 3:13 am, by Judie Lipsett
Maybe it is the fact that I was up until 4am working on a software review for Clinton, but when the latest Daily Candy email just pinged my inbox, its subject definitely caught my attention. Perhaps after sleeping until 10 am tomorrow I won’t think that it is quite so fascinating, but maybe I will.
The subject? Paper made out of elephant’s poo. Yeah, seriously. You can check it out here, at the pootique (of course).
How do you make paper from poo? Read on…
The making of paper starts with the collection and processing of the dung pulp. Elephant dung is typically full of short to medium grained fibrous materials from the elephants diet which when processed makes excellent paper:
• We collect naturally dried elephant dung from elephant conservation parks and bring it back to our paper-making factory.
• We then pre-rinse the elephant dung with water, leaving only the fibrous materials from the grasses, bamboo & fruits they’ve eaten.
• Afterwards, we place the fibers into a giant pot of boiling water to ensure the fibers are super clean. After this thorough cleaning, any color that we may want to add can be added.
• Natural fibers from banana trees & pineapples are added to the dung mixture so the paper will be thicker & stronger.
• Once this is all mixed together, we separate the moist fibers into small “cakes’ or “wafers” of about 300-400 grams each.
• The cakes are spread evenly over a mesh-bottomed tray measuring about 60cm by 90cm.
• The tray is leaned up against a tree, angled toward the sun and allowed to dry naturally for a few hours.
• Once dry, we peel the sheet of paper from the mesh tray and start making Poo Poo Paper products.
This is how we made the hand made paper stationery and our how to make recycled paper process!
Okay, so it’s not quite as nasty as it originally sounded, in fact the products are quite nice and you would never know what they had once been…if I hadn’t told you. But I did, and now you can enjoy getting the image of what was out of your head. 
Journals, note boxes, stationary, and sets are available, and some of the proceeds go back to help the elephants.
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June 5th, 2007 at 8:18 am
That’s funny! I have a friend who works in Mozambique, Africa as a missionary. When he came back to the States a couple of years ago, he brought gifts. He had several calendars that were printed on a gray, rough-textured paper. Only after the peopel he gave them to went on and on about how nice they were and how they were going to hang them on their refrigerators did he tell them what it was made from — elephant dung!
June 5th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I think I smell Judie’s next review coming…:)
Doug
June 5th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Ha!