If life serves you lemons... make lemonade, but what if life serves you elephant poop, heaps and heaps of the stuff?

This is the dilemma facing staff at the Elephant Conservation Center... and their solution? Well naturally it is to make elephant dung paper!

Elephants eat between 200-250kg of forage a day. As uniquely poor digesters, roughly 50% of their intake comes out the other end providing copious amounts of fibrous material, and so starts the simple process of making elephant dung paper.

Collected and dried, elephant dung is washed thoroughly with water and disinfectant leaving only the fibre content. After carefully sorting, ensuring all non-dung fibre is removed, it is boiled in a vat for at least four hours making the fibres clean and soft. Now similar to the manufacturing process of handmade paper, the boiled pulp is put through its paces or namely pulp beaters when colours or dyes can be added. Mixed with water, the pulp is then lifted up on flat sieves to dry into reams of paper. Once dried the paper is smoothed with stones or by passing it through a calendaring machine.

And voila... smooth, usable poop paper!

Making paper from elephant dung at the Center is not only economic and environmentally friendly, but provides a sustainable source of income for local ethnic people involved in its production, as well as supporting our elephant conservation efforts.

Elephant dung paper is 100% bacteria free, odourless and a novel way to communicate with your family and friends. So forget about emails, Facebook and the like... put pen to paper, poop paper and make a difference.

Bottoms up!