Will the Paper of the Future Be Made from Poop?

It might sound gross, but it's eco-friendly: Paper is made from plant pulp. Animals that eat plants excrete plant pulp. Learn why some researchers have high hopes for poo-pyrus in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain stuff,
Lauren folk bomb here it's become an evergreen piece of
advice for aspiring writers. Put your button the chair and
write a first draft, no matter how crappy. Now, thanks
to a breakthrough in chemical technology, that first draft can
be literal crap, or at least printed on it. Researchers

(00:25):
announced at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in
March that it's possible to turn manure from cows, elephants, goats,
and other grass munchers into yes paper. As you may
already know, paper is made from cellulos that usually comes
from trees. Not every place has a lot of trees,
but as we all know, everybody poops, and some of

(00:48):
those poopers leave patties around for stepping in or collecting
if you're of a mind to collect poop like these
a c S scientists are One of the researchers who
presented this idea at the a c S meeting. In question,
Alexander Bismarck, PhD. Was driving around crete and watched goats
eat grass and poop it out. He thought that maybe
the goats were doing to the grass what paper manufacturers

(01:11):
due two trees turn it into cellulose that could be
made into paper, because of course that's what you think
of while you're driving around an idyllic island. Cretion excretions.
Some animals, it turns out, do a pretty good job
pooping out paper ready cellulose, depending on which animal is
doing the manure manufacturing, Bismarck said in a press statement.

(01:32):
Up to that manure is cellulose, which is then easily
accessible to make paper from trees, the trees have to
be ground way down by a machine into a pulp
before being made into proper paper. Goats do that work
for free every day of their grass muncheon poop leaven lives.
The only thing they require is more grass, which makes

(01:52):
more poop, which makes more paper, and they need some
water to drink and maybe scritches on their little chins.
But either way, it's a more environmentally friendly process than
traditional papermaking. And it's not just goats. The researchers moved
onto piles of patties from horses, cows, and elephants. To
elephants in wildlife parks in Africa are number one at

(02:13):
going number two at the San Francisco Zoo alone, an
adult male African elephant can produce three hundred pounds. That's
six kilos of pooh. That's a lot of potential paper.
The first uses for this pooh paper would probably be industrial.
According to the researchers, it could filter wastewater before it's
released into the environment, which seems fitting. But poop pyrus,

(02:35):
or nanopaper, as the researchers rather boringly call it, could
also be used to write on. So don't give up,
fellow writers, Our first drafts could soon be really truly crappy.
Today's episode was written by Kristen hall Geisler and produced
by Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of

(02:57):
other topics with big potential, visit our home planet, how
stuff Works dot com. M