PooPoo Paper

 

     Asian elephants come in three different colors: brown, grey, and black. Their skin feels like leather.

Their life span is between 55 to 70 years. 

    The Asian elephants' top speed can reach 27 miles per hour. In parts of Thailand, it's challenging to share the road with an Asian elephant! This elephant charged out of the jungle and onto the road to chase the Toyota! This photo was taken in the Khao Yai National Park.

The Asian elephant's height can be between 7 feet to 10 feet.

      Asian elephants can weigh from 6,500 lbs to 11,000 lbs! They eat over 18 hours in a day. 

     You and I eat only 3 or 4 pounds of food a day. An average female Asian elephant, called a cow, consumes nearly 350 pounds of food per day. A  male or bull elephant, eats nearly 440 pounds of food a day. 

    And, are you ready for this? A female Asian elephant poops 202 pounds daily!  A male poops 253 pounds per day!!  

   That's a lot of poop. So what can be done with all that poop you ask? Well, you can make it into Poo Poo Paper. Yes, that's right. Poo Poo Paper!

  We visited the Elephant Poo Poo Park.

 The mission of the Elephant PooPoo Park is to utilize daily elephant poop and process it into sustainable paper products. The "end" result of the poo poo paper is a colorful paper that is tree-free. The finished product does not integrate wood pulp fibers nor any chlorine nor bleach in the making of the paper. The dye is natural, and chemical-free. Believe it or not, the colored paper is edible and made with soy-based ink.   

  We enjoyed our interactive experience making the Poo Poo paper. Creating the Poo Poo paper products from elephant poo illustrated the important message of conservation and sustainability.
     The process of making Poo Poo paper has to be seen to believe it, so here are a few photos:

Poo poo fibers

 The first step in the process of transforming elephant poo into everyday paper involves scooping up the poo.  Once the workers have gathered it, they wash away the waste. All that's left are the plant fibers.


  Believe it or not, the poo is odor-free and is dried in the sun for 2 days. It feels like hay.
  The dried poo is then boiled for several hours to become completely sterilized. This is a manual process.

     The sterilized poo is strained into a container where it is mixed with other non-wood plant fillers. At this time, natural and chemical-free plant dyes are used for different colors. Now it is ready to hand press into the screen. 

     As a side note,  some of the mixtures can be rolled into colored balls where they are sun-dried into hard, colorful poo poo balls. These poo poo balls are quite light.




Back to the process of making the poo poo paper: one starts pressing and smoothing the colorful, soft, gooey mass evenly on a mesh screen board (similar to a silk-screening board). The board is then set in the sun for drying.

  
   Once dried, we could easily remove it from the screen. The trick is to be patient and not tear it. And voila, poo poo paper!

 After the hands-on tour, we made colored poo poo paper photo frames, diary covers, and cards.

Of course, there were items for sale, such as the ones below. All proceeds go toward the care for the elephants at the Elephant Rescue Park.



We created a poo poo paper photo frame. It will be a lovely, lasting memento filled with photos of our amazing, memorable day with the astounding elephants of the Elephant Rescue Park Chaing Mai.