Paper Making & Products

We make two main types of paper: from maize leaves and from elephant dung (yes really!).All the materials used are sourced locally at no cost - recycling of natural resources at its best making a beautiful African Craft with a contemporary twist.

The maize paper is made by combining maize leaves and recycled waste paper. The leaves are cooked on an environmentally friendly stove for a whole day to soften them, before being pulped in a large blender. Initially, this was a standard kitchen blender but, thanks to a donation from a kind supporter, we now have an industrial sized machine that has lifted our output immensely! The waste paper (which is usually burnt here in Tanzania) is soaked, torn and pulped, before being mixed 50-50 with the pulped maize leaves. Dye is added to the pulp for coloured papers at this point. The maize-paper pulp is then added to a large vat of water, and the sheets are formed on wooden frames with fine mesh stretched over them, called moulds. The mould is scooped down into the watery pulp in the vat, then lifted up so that the water falls through the mesh and the maize-paper fibres form a sheet on top. This wet sheet of paper is then turned onto a metal sheet, and the mould is lifted off, leaving the wet paper on the metal to dry. The following day the dry sheet of paper is lifted off the metal and is ready to be made into a card, album or picture frame etc. Magic!

The elephant dung paper really is made from elephant dung. And no, it doesn't smell! Iringa is a large town on the edge of the Ruaha National Park. Many visitors stay at the various game lodges on the edge of the park and some of the lodges have swimming pools for the guests enjoyment. At night elephants come to the pools to drink and leave the inevitable deposits. These have to be cleared up before the guests arise, but instead of just dumping it the dung is brought into Neema Crafts where it is washed (very well!) and processed in the same way as the maize leaves. Cooking it for a whole day with a small amount of alkaline softens and sterilizes it. If you think about it, using elephant dung to make paper isn't so strange - standard paper is made from trees, which is just what elephants eat. They are just like a big paper making machine, chewing up the tree fibres for us to make into beautiful paper!

The problem with the elephant dung paper is that when pulp from waste paper is added, the bleach turns the final product to an unappealing grey colour. To counter this we collect the waste from the tea manufacturing process from a fair trade tea factory in the nearby Mufindi tea estates and use this to dye the waste paper pulp, before mixing it with the processed dung. This makes the elephant dung paper products the ULTIMATE fair trade items! (recycled waste from another fair trade process, elephant dung, giving a conservation slant, all made into a beautiful product by our skilled disabled workers at Neema Crafts!)

Some of the paper is sold in sheets but mostly it is made into cards, notebooks, picture frames, and albums etc. The majority of the paper makers are deaf and communicate in sign language, whilst the rest are physically disabled. Hand-made paper is a great crafts for this type of context as it is low technology, environmentally friendly, uses free waste materials and has lots of different stages so everyone in a mixed ability group can take part in at least one part of the process.

We make a variety of other paper types, some with coffee bean waste, some with pineapple leaves and one elephant dung paper with seeds of herbs such as basil and thyme in the paper so you can plant your card after enjoying it, just add water and the fertiliser and seeds are all ready and waiting to give you a lovely herb plant!