How to make Paper out of Elephant Poo?! | Maddie Moate

hello everyone and welcome back to my channel i'm maddie i'm greg and today we're at the elephant poo poo paper park in chiang mai thailand that's right you heard correctly because we're going to be learning how to make paper out of dung scat first things first we need to go to station number one to get there we need to follow the trail of poo here we go welcome to the pooh shed fuller's poo this is all elephant poo and you're probably wondering why make paper out of elephant poo actually it's gonna be all dirty and smelly right well all paper is made from something called fibre and the good news is that elephant poo is full of it if we take a closer look inside this poo here can you see all of these stringy threads well that is fibre and it makes up the bulk of the vegetation that elephants eat elephants can eat between 200 kilograms and 500 kilograms of plant stuff every day that's more than four greg's yeah that's more than four greg's worth of banana leaves of dried grass of sugar cane and all of that is packed full of fiber elephants don't eat meat or dairy at all and this is why when their poo is dry it isn't smelly it's just dried up plant stuff so i can stick my nose in here and give it a good sniff and be absolutely fine go on them nothing see yeah it doesn't smell really doesn't smell however fiber is difficult to digest and elephants have pretty bad digestive systems in fact of all the food they shovel into their mouths they only digest about a quarter to a half of it so a lot of their food comes out looking pretty similar to the way it went in and they poo 15 to 20 times a day so there's a lot of this stuff lying around all this fibre is great for making paper but at the moment this poo is full of germs and bacteria from inside the elephant's digestive system so we need to give it a good old clean and that is what is next [Music] the dirty poo from the pooh shed is put inside a big drum and it's filled with water and left to soak for a night and a day and during that time the dirt dissolves into the water sinks to the bottom leaving just the fluffy fibres floating on top and then we can use a basket like this to scoop up those fibers and we give it a really good rinse by dunking it into fresh water three to five times and every time we rinse it just like this the poo gets cleaner and the water runs clearer but it's still not ready [Music] we've gotta make poo soup yeah the sludgy rinsed fiber gets put inside this giant cauldron and gets boiled for six hours and that's what it takes to kill off all those germs and bacteria from inside the elephant's guts [Applause] i quite like this job like a poo chef a poo chef welcome to the poo chef restaurants once the poo has been boiled it's left out to dry in the sun and all that remains is this it's the fiber it's just like dry hay and this is ready to be turned into paper this is the mixing station and it's a lot like making a smoothie you take your clean dry elephant poo and you put it inside with some water you also add some leftover bits of paper so from the products they've made anything that's scrap goes inside excellent recycling if you want to color it you use some food coloring just like you would if you're coloring a cake this machine chops everything up into little fit and then mixes it together really well and then when it's ready it's gonna drop out the other side here we go once everything has been chopped up and mixed together this is what we're left with this mushy stuff and it's called pulp and the water is going to drain away and then we're going to squeeze the pulp together into a ball and i reckon a ball about this size we'll make one large sheet of poopoo paper and that is what we're doing next [Music] so now for a lesson in paper making first thing i need to do is place this tray with a mesh layer inside this bath of water and the water will help us to spread out the pulp nice and evenly across the mesh so i'm watching the expert here and i'm breaking up the uh the pulp ball and spreading it evenly across the tray step number two is to carefully tap the top of the water and this makes sure there isn't any gaps in the pulp i think i'm doing it right is she good apart from this holes in the corners you have to be delicate with your fingers maddie i'm trying there's a whole lot yeah i know there's a hole and there's a hole all right and there's a hole no holes now we have to lift the tray out of the water and because the mesh has tiny holes in the water drains leaving just a thin layer of pulp on top but now we need to dry this out [Music] it's quite heavy [Music] after five hours you get this it's dried out hopefully i can push gently from the back yes one piece of elephant poof paper how awesome is that so there is one more stage of the process if we want which is to take it to a factory and squash it down nice and smooth but i actually really like the rough you can see some of those fibers and it's got that handmade feel should we go turn it into something yeah what today we've made paper from the fiber found in poo but the paper you use has probably been made out of wood fibre that comes from trees trees make great strong paper but here at the park they don't think we should have to chop them down if we're only going to use our paper to scribble on and throw away we shouldn't waste our precious trees especially when we can make it out of poo a waste material that's definitely going spare here they make lots of things out of poo poo paper but we've decided to make a bookmark i'm putting my name on it and greg is giving it some decoration i'm gonna put an elephant having a poo [Laughter] it's amazing to think that this started out like as a plant that was eaten by an elephant pooped out collected bought here where it was cleaned and then turned into poopoo paper that is the ultimate recycling so so awesome we really hope you enjoyed this video we loved making it do subscribe to the channel for loads more like this stay curious we'll see you next time bye

Channel: Maddie Moate

Views: 6,220,099

Keywords: how to make paper out of elephant poo, how, to, make, paper, out, of, elephant, poo, maddie moate, maddie, moate, greg foot, greg, foot, elephant poo poo paper, elephant poo poo paper park, poo poo, how to make paper, thailand, chiang mai, travel, machines and making, travel the world, family attraction, kids, learning, education, science, process, factory, how is it made, cbeebies, do you know?, maddie cbeebies

Id: IUWNFEkKXXE

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018