everydaytrash

Ngorongoro crater, Tanzania

A zoo in England recently dropped £150,000 on a poo-converting machine to make compost out of elephant and other dung available to them via their permanent residents.  I don’t like zoos.  Seeing animals in small and smelly spaces, much like seeing old people alone on park benches, makes me sad and uncomfortable.  I guess it’s a good thing that this particular zoo will save the waste produced on site and use it to beatify the space and feed the animals by turning it into fertilizer for feed crops and other plantings on the grounds.

Then again, I might just be biased because, as you may recall, I already have a favorite elephant dung recycling program: the Paper Making Education Trust (PAMET) in Malawi.  Here is a sample of their lovely stationary.

PAMET headquarters, Blantyre, Malawi

And here is a sample of the dung and paper bricks they make and sell as low-cost fuel for homes (a product clearly endorsed by Jesus).

Jesus and PAMET poo bricks

PAMET makes the world a better place by providing jobs and job training and recycling elephant dung from a game park.   They collect old school exercise books and other discarded paper and use it (mixed with dung and other plant fibers) to make stationary sold at relatively high prices by Malawian standards.  I love the idea that people employed by PAMET use the cash recooped from dung mixed with old school materials to send their kids to school.

I also recently discovered a Thai group called simply Elephant Dung Paper whose main purpose is more elefocused.  The proceeds from their paper goes back into conservation.  Here is a handy chart of how recycling poo leads to “fat and healthy elephants” (who in turn produce more dung which in turn leads to…).

via elephantdungpaper.com

And of course, the best known of the genre is The Great Elephant Poo Paper Company whose “poo-tique” you can visit online.  Consider this my nod to holiday gift guide blog posts.