Sustainable Paper Making

Our goal for this project was to create paper in a sustainable way, and because we are not allowed to cut down trees, we decided to go dig inside a recycling bin, where we found lots of paper. It was Jonah's idea that we should make paper out of paper that cannot be used for anything anymore else. At first, we were thinking about working with Meyer, but then we realized it was impossible to build a zip line going off of a deck (which is what we where going to do.) Instead, we decided to make recycled paper and Meyer branched off of our group because he wanted to do something else. We searched the web for how to make recycled paper and we found this nifty video that showed us how to make recycled paper.

We started out by doing research and later moved on to make a sketch. Which later turned into a model, a prototype. Then we made a larger one which worked and functioned a lot better. We had a problem when we couldn’t find any mesh, but luckily Mr. Cohen found some mesh that we could use.

Throughout this process, we learned various things: we learned how to make colored paper (that was really just because we discovered some colored paper that was in the recycling) and most of all, we had fun! The process of making paper is actually quite simple: first, you have to find some paper preferably in the recycling so you are saving trees, not using more of them, then rip it up, and put it in a blender. Next, you fill up the blender with water and blend it for 30 seconds, then you take it out and put it down on your custom-made sifter (the paper pulp goes onto the mesh) the mesh lets all of the water out and keeps the blended paper in (which is what all of our paper is made out of.) After that, we put the paper on to newspaper to iron it, when we ironed the paper it became thinner, plus it was drying faster. But since we wanted it to dry evenly, and we didn’t want to handle an iron all day. We set a heat lamp, and we let it sit overnight with the heat lamp over it, and the next day it was dry.

If we had more time, we would try to figure out a way to make paper in a more sustainable way, a way that we could make more paper and even step farther would be a machine that would make the paper for us. It would also be cool to find some chemicals that would breakdown the paper, making it possible to make it thinner.




This is one of the links that we used to help us make the paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR_218EtLJU