Hear about a plan to turn kangaroo droppings into paper.


FIONA BLACKWOOD: With more winter rain and plenty of grass around, it is a case of what goes in must come out, and a team of paper-makers in Burnie is relying on the kangaroo's last meal as the main ingredient for a new line of hand-made paper.

JOANNA GAIR (CREATIVE PAPER TASMANIA): I have been inspired by the African and Thai paper makers who have been using elephant dung to make paper for quite a while. Also, some of the Scandinavian countries, as I heard in an article, use elk dung in their office paper, and I thought, "Why not?"

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Joanna Gair's bright idea means paper maker Darren Simpson spends a fair bit of his working day sorting through kangaroo poo in search of the best nuggets.

Is every bit of roo poo the same?

DARREN SIMPSON (PAPER CRAFTSMAN): No, I've been very selective as I go here to make sure I'm going to get the right type of poo that will boil down quickly and has a nice amount of fibre in the poo.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: So you are fairly picky about your poo.

DARREN SIMPSON: I'm very picky about the poo. We're very serious about our roo poo paper here, so we do it drop by drop.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Which kind of roo makes the best poo?

DARREN SIMPSON: Obviously the kangaroo. (Chuckles) I think the larger the roo, the bigger the poo. That's our target here.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: It takes a fair few roo scats to make a piece of paper - about half a handful per sheet. Fortunately for Creative Paper, the Burnie community has rallied to help.

JOANNA GAIR: Quite often in the mornings when I come into work, there's a little bag of roo poo or wallaby poo tied to the door handle with a little note on it. It's been good. It's been very civic minded with people helping us out.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: But picking up what the kangaroo has left behind is just the beginning. Making the paper is a time-consuming and at times stomach-churning process.

Darren, this is obviously an outdoor job.

DARREN SIMPSON: My word, yes.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: It smells awful.

DARREN SIMPSON: It is. It's not the most pleasant part of the job.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: How long does that take?

DARREN SIMPSON: About five hours. You leave it sitting here boiling and just keep checking on it now and again and giving it a bit of a stir until it's ready.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Once it's cooked, it's simply a case of washing away the nasties leaving a natural fibre.

Despite the novelty value, there's an ecological lesson to be learnt from this venture.

JOANNA GAIR: Paper-making is not always about trees; it's also about recycling.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: Do you think you would give the pulp mill a run for its money?

JOANNA GAIR: I doubt that very much. We are a different kettle of fish in many ways. Our paper is entirely hand made using 2 000-year-old processes, so there's no industrial side of things at all. It's all very much hands-on.

FIONA BLACKWOOD: And as long as Tasmania's kangaroos continue to be a regular source of raw ingredients, Creative Paper will remain Australia's largest hand-made paper mill.

But for now, the mill is drawing the line at testing other forms of native animal poo for paper-making qualities.

JOANNA GAIR: That can be a dodgy subject. No, probably not. The criteria has to be that the provider of the poo needs to be vegetarian. I'm getting into dodgy territory here. No, probably not - I will just leave it at that.