|
The Story of Pooh
Sri Lanka is home to about 4,000 of the estimated 40,000 Asian elephants still found in the wild. Elephant herds follow well defined seasonal migration routes between wet and dry zones. When people settle to farm along these traditional routes, elephants often cause considerable damage to the crops. As a result the elephants are hunted down and killed. Since 1950, it is estimated more than 4,000 elephants have been destroyed by farmers.
Everyone agrees that resolving the human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka is no easy task. Much depends upon educating the rural farmers as to the worth of the much maligned Asian elephant by finding ways to use the elephant as a sustainable economic resource. Elephant dung may be one such valuable resource that may eventually convince farmers that they can indeed learn to live in the same environment with these magnificent animals.
And, it’s a commodity that’s readily available, lots of it, for free! On average an adult elephant produces about 500 pounds of dung per day. Until now, no one had a use for it. That is until some people concerned about the declining Asian elephant population decided something had to be done to save the elephants. A project was hatched to make paper from elephant dung! Since an elephant’s diet is vegetarian, the waste produced is basically raw cellulose.
Properly cleaned and processed, the cellulose is converted into a beautifully textured paper, marketed as Ellie Pooh Paper. This acid free, linen-like papyrus-type paper is currently made into journals, notebooks, stationery, and greeting cards. Although this paper may not be the answer to the ongoing conflict that exists between the farmers and Asian elephants in Sri Lanka, it is a great start! Check out our Ellie Pooh Paper products as we all work together to support this important project.
100% recycled~75% Pooh~100% fun
|
