Poo-tiful: Paper Made Out of Elephant Dung

Photo: Justin Baeder  

Yup, you read that right. There’s paper made out of elephant poo out there. And it’s nice looking too and doesn’t smell at all. This just goes to show that you can make paper out of any kind of fiber. But one step after the other. Let’s look at how paper is made out of elephant poo.

First things first. Elephants are large animals and thus, spend almost 16 hours a day eating to sustain all that bod mass. They are not only purely vegetarian but herbivores, meaning they chomp on the leaves and bark of trees, shrubs, fruits, grasses and herbs. As poor digesters, 50% of what goes into an elephant comes out exactly the same way, thus elephants’ dung is just fiber. And guess what, fibers are the first stage of the elephant poo paper making process. Thank you, Mr. or Ms. Elephant!

Photo: Ian Barbour

Then, the dung has to be collected. And there’s lots of it – an average elephant will produce about 50 kg of dung. Every day. Phew, that’s a lot of dung! (In case you were wondering, to get that kind of, er, output, an elephant eats about 200-250 kg of food a day!) But back to the 50 kg of dung – that’s about enough for 115 sheets of paper. Not bad, eh?

Photo: Harvey Barrison 

Now, the collected dungs gets washed and boiled for about five hours. Yup, slow and steady does it. The elephant poo pulp is then spun around for about three hours to cut the fibers.

Then, color is added depending on the color the finished paper is supposed to have. Given that this is such a natural process, only natural dyes and colors should be used. Natural vegetative binding agents, for example, or water-soluble salt dyes are great. Then, the pulp is shaped into balls of equal size and sifted evenly onto large frames.

Photo: Colin & Sarah Northway

These dry in the sun and after all the moisture has evaporated – voila, there’s your colored sheet of paper! Now it just needs to be sanded so that it has a smoother surface. Then, it is cut into the desired size and shape so that it can be assembled into letter paper, note pads, greeting cards and more. Done! How neat is that?

Photo: Justin Baeder 

But it gets even better. Initiatives like Mr. Ellie Pooh LLC not only make beautiful paper products, they also work on establishing local industries out of this process that will help improve elephant-human interactions. Currently, many elephants are killed because they are “in the way” of agriculture and other projects but once they are part of the industry as one of the main suppliers of the raw material, they will be seen as an asset rather than a threat and treated with respect. Inspiring to say the least! Now if only human poo were as useful.