Would you lick an envelope made from used toilet paper? One Israeli firm hopes you will. Don’t gag, paper consumption is at an all-time high (damn Belgium, save some for later) and something must be done.
Applied Clean Tech collects the solid sludge from water treatment plants and, through a proprietary method, extracts the cellulose from the used bog rolls, human faeces and other solid sludge. This is then cleaned, sterilised and repressed like sheets of poopyrus. The result looks much like particle board and could reportedly support up to 10 per cent of the world’s paper needs while reducing the amount of sludge waste reaching land fills by 75 per cent.
“We’ve actually discovered a new source of paper,” Rafael Aharon, founder and CEO of ACT told TreeHugger. “A real good source if you collect it from the point we do, the point before the biological processes of the wastewater treatment plant destroy it.”
The company is negotiating with North American municipalities for… source material… to process. It hopes to eventually expand its product offerings beyond envelopes to other packaging, including for food. Just make sure they get sent to Belgium first. [Applied Clean Tech via Treehugger]
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