The Lampang elephant sanctuary to the north of Bangkok is home to 40 elephants, which each consume 200 kg of vegetation per day. A quarter of this vegetable matter remains undigested and ends up on the ground as unsavory-looking little heaps. Together, the Lampang elephants produce up to two metric tons of dung per day, which was causing a serious problem over time. In their quest for a solution, Thai scientists came up with the idea of using the elephant dung to produce decorative gift wrap.

Making use of what’s left over. A common trait of elephants and other herbivores, regardless of the continent they live in, is that they only digest a relatively small amount of their food. About half of the bamboo leaves and grasses they eat re-emerges as undigested fiber that can be treated to make it suitable for paper production. The resulting paper is used to craft various brightly colored gift items that do not smell, are totally bacteria-free and are now being exported to Europe.

Recent tradition. The manufacturing process is based on traditional papermaking methods. The elephant dung is collected and heated in large steel vats to kill off the bacteria. In a trough, the resulting fiber pulp is mixed with water and stirred until it breaks down into very small fibers. But because there is not much demand for brown-colored paper, tree bark, cinnamon or rice stalks are added to the mixture to give it color. The resulting doughy substance is poured onto a fine-mesh screen that collects the fibers and spreads them evenly. The screen with the fibers is then placed in the sun to dry. This produces a sheet with a texture similar to woodchip paper and which can be used for gift wrap or envelopes. One elephant can “produce” the raw material for up to 200 sheets of paper a day. The finished products from Thailand are exported all over the world by the PooPooPaper company, which is also now raising its own elephants and producing paper from their dung.

Brown is the new green. Other countries are following Thailand’s example. Since the initial experiments in Lampang, the use of dung for papermaking has spread all over the world. In the heart of Sri Lanka the Eco Maximus project is flying the flag for species conservation. To protect the endangered elephant species, a paper factory close to an elephant breeding center produces notebooks, postcards and writing paper sets from two metric tons of elephant waste per day. 90% of the articles are shipped to Europe, with all proceeds benefiting the species conservation project. The eco-friendly principle has found emulators all over the world: In China they have discovered how to make paper from panda dung, while in Australia they are making use of kangaroo droppings. Northern Hemisphere animals such as elks in Canada or Scandinavia are also suitable suppliers of raw materials. And in Germany, a paper technologist has successfully produced paper from horse dung.//

Sources:

Greenpeace (2006): http://www.greenpeace-magazin.de/magazin/archiv/3-06/elefantenschutz/

Der Spiegel (2001): http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/recycling-forscher-gewinnen-papier-aus-elefantendreck-a-137796.html

GEO (2005): http://www.geo.de/GEOlino/nachrichten/papier-aus-kaengurumist-170205-3479.html

Reuters (2014): http://uk.reuters.com/video/2014/04/29/elephant-dung-recycled-into-poo-paper?videoId=312772257

NBC News (2005): http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6974584/ns/us_news-environment/t/recyclings-next-frontier-poop-paper/

Poo Poo Paper (2006): http://www.poopoopaper.com/