Poo Paper!

My youngest sister spent a couple of weeks in Sri Lanka back in December/January and when I saw her earlier this month she gave me my Sri Lankan Christmas present: A bookmark, some delicious mango tea, and this lovely elephant stationary. One slip of paper in with the stationary notes that it "is carefully made by our skilled artists using a mixture of traditional and contemporary materials and designs to create an original product." That sounds great! And what might some of those traditional materials be? Why, 75% of this paper is elephant dung.

It does actually smell a little earthy, but not shitty. I had second thoughts about licking the envelope when I sent a letter out the other day, but I decided to live dangerously. Luckily, according to this article the dung is all boiled and sanitized. [My favorite part of that article is the "Dung paper in easy steps" sidebar: 1. Collect fresh dung, 2. Sort it, 3. Dry it in the sun, 4.Boil it, 5. Press pulp to make paper. Let's do it!]

One nice thing is that the sale of this particular brand of dung paper goes to support a home for elderly and disabled elephants in Pinnawela, Sri Lanka. If you don't want to help elderly and disabled elephants, then you are quite the jerk.

My favorite article on the subject of elephant-dung paper is this slightly fractured, but very endearing piece from London. The best part is the useful introductory paragraph which notes that "Elephants never forget and are, therefore, noted for their good memories." Can't argue with that.