Elephant dung is no longer a waste, but raw material for paper

Michael Flancman from Thailand owns a company which turns elephant dung in to paper goods and stationery and he doesn't mind getting his hand dirty because it fetches him good rewards

BANGKOK (Scrap Monster): Michael Flancman from Thailand owns a company which turns elephant dung in to paper goods and stationery and he doesn’t mind getting his hand dirty because it fetches him good rewards.

According to Flancman, turning elephant dung to products is not a big deal, every week Flancman and a team of employees visit elephant conservation parks near Chiang Mai to collect naturally dried elephant droppings.

After the dung is collected, it’s carefully rinsed with water, leaving only the fibrous materials from the grasses, bamboo and fruits the elephants have eaten but couldn’t digest.

Then those fibers are thrown into a giant pot of boiling water to ensure an even more thorough cleansing and sterilization, leaving the fibers primed and ready to be made into paper.

Once additional fibers from pineapple plants and trees are thrown into the all-natural mix to add thickness, his team separates the moist pulp into small cakes that are then spread over a mesh-bottomed tray and left out to dry naturally under the sun for several hours.

Once dry, the cakes transform into sheets of paper, and Flancman and his crew are able to peel them off the tray and start making Poo Poo Paper products.

He says this tedious handmade process is repeated often, and in the end, the paper comes out sturdy and oatmeal-colored without a hint of stink. The boiling of the fibers acts as an antiseptic treatment.

Though elephants in Thailand are Flancman’s main suppliers, he said his company has been recently branching out to include products made from cow, horse and donkey poo.

Flancman could make about 25 letter-sized sheets of paper with just one piece of elephant dung or 10 standard-sized journals.

Flancman roughly collects 5,000 pounds of dung from elephant conservation parks every week. Flancman said he’s begun incorporating some rudimentary machines into the paper-making routine so he can pump up production; improve his products and lower costs.

The paper has really evolved from when he first started doing this in 2004, now it’s evolved into sturdy, flat paper in various sizes. The machines have helped him smooth out the paper so it’s easier to write on and have also helped lower the costs on our products. The goal was to make a fully sustainable, eco-friendly product that was still accessible and affordable to consumers.

Besides finding a functional way to repurpose a raw material like dung and add to the planet’s sustainability cycle, Poo Poo Paper serves another deep purpose. Flancman says a portion of the profits from his paper goods is donated to elephant welfare and conservation programs as a means of keeping his main suppliers safe, well-fed and content, thebqb.com reported.