How to make eco-friendly dishes

How to make paper towels and dishes using old newspapers

Pile of old news­pa­pers? Don’t rush to throw them out – you can use them to make pa­per dish­es!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment:

  • waste pa­per (old doc­u­ments and news­pa­pers);
  • blender;
  • hot wa­ter;
  • glass bowl;
  • gauze;
  • fun­nel;
  • cling film;
  • bowl;
  • cut­ting board.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Com­bine fine­ly-cut waste pa­per (old doc­u­ments or a news­pa­per) and hot wa­ter to the max­i­mum mark on the glass in a blender bowl. Let sit for half an hour, then blend. Trans­fer the re­sult­ing mass into a larg­er glass con­tain­er, add ½ L (½ pint) of hot wa­ter and let sit for half an hour once again, and then blend again with a hand­held blender. Trans­fer the re­sult­ing pulp to a fun­nel with gauze and rinse with warm wa­ter un­til the runoff wa­ter is com­plete­ly clear. Then ap­ply the washed mass to a bowl wrapped with cling film and leave to dry. Your eco-friend­ly dish is ready! You can also dis­trib­ute it in a thin lay­er to make pa­per tow­els.

At­ten­tion! Use this dish only for food in pack­ag­ing!

Process de­scrip­tion

Pa­per con­sists of cel­lu­lose fibers. When we soak the shred­ded pa­per in hot wa­ter and leave it for a while, the cel­lu­lose fibers ab­sorb wa­ter and swell. As a re­sult, they loosen to form a thick pa­per pulp. This pulp can be ap­plied to any plates, bowls, cut­ting boards, etc. Af­ter some time, the wa­ter evap­o­rates from the pulp, it hard­ens, and per­ma­nent­ly adopts the de­sired form!

Ac­cord­ing to the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, more than 80% of ma­rine lit­ter is plas­tic and about half of these items are dis­pos­able. The cel­lu­lose of which the pa­per con­sists is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and suf­fi­cient­ly strong, but less re­sis­tant to mois­ture and more ex­pen­sive than plas­tic. Re­cy­cling pa­per saves en­er­gy, and re­duces air and wa­ter pol­lu­tion. Also, re­cy­cling is im­por­tant to pre­serve for­est ecosys­tems, since many prod­ucts are still made from so-called pri­ma­ry cel­lu­lose, i.e. wood.

Try it