Jabulani Safari and HERD have embarked on a new project… Dung Paper Making!

Our goal is to make it on-site and to create paper and other items such as bookmarks and cards to sell in our Jabulani boutique. This is not only a sustainable practice but also another way to raise money for the care and support of the herd and orphans!

For now, we are only just beginning, but we’re very excited to be getting our hands dirty and finding another way to recycle the tonnes of elephant dung we remove from the stables and orphanage daily.

Currently, we also use the elephant dung for many other purposes, such as land management (filling potholes, erosion sites, and the side of the dirt roads, as well as brush packing), in our wormery and to sell as fertiliser to local farmers. After testing our new dung project we have also welcomed local incentive and team building groups for a day of paper making fun!

Adine shares a few tricks to the trade

• The ingredients we use are dung, water, scraps of paper, and old egg holder cartons.
• Add the dung to water and let the hay and grass in the dung float to the top. Remove this and put it aside. Then to water add your paper and cartons and mix them up with a blender. Then add the hay and grass bits – these are what make the final product interesting. Then you dip your mould into the mixture and fill it with what will become your paper.
• You can also add lavender flowers or pieces of orange peel. Anything!
• The drier dung makes lighter paper. When you have fresher dung the paper becomes darker.
• Sunnier weather makes your paper dry faster.

Watch Elephant Dung Paper Being Made

Watch as Khensani, a junior nursery carer at HERD – Hoedspruit Elephant Rehabilitation and Development makes her own batch of dung paper, dipping the mould into the mixture, letting it solidify a bit in the desired mould shape, and then turning it over onto the tiled ground to dry.

Join us for your own day of dung and paper making at Jabulani

Young guests at Jabulani Safari will have the opportunity to make some unique elephant dung paper of their own when participating in our JabuJuniors programme!

Read more about our sustainability at Jabulani in our blogs:

• The Sustainable Safari at Jabulani
• Sustainable Consumption at Jabulani
• The Harmony of Humans & Elephants at Jabulani
• The Wormery