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Recycled Paper

What You Need

Newspaper
Measuring cup
Clean, empty, large glass jar with lid
Hot tap water
Wooden spoon
Electric blender
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Metal baking pan (larger than 8 by 10 inches)
Metal screening (8 by 10 inches)
Scissors
Markers, crayons, paints, pencils, or pens

What to Do
Cut sheets of newspaper into long, thin strips (or feed the newspaper through a paper shredder) until you have 1-1/2 cups of packed, shredded newspaper.
Put the shredded newspaper into the jar and fill it three quarters full of hot tap water. Screw on the lid and let stand for three hours, shaking the jar occasionally and beating and stirring with the wooden spoon. As the paper absorbs the water, add more hot tap water.
When the mixture becomes pasty and creamy, pour it into the blender—with adult supervision. Dissolve the cornstarch in 1/2 cup hot tap water, pour into the blender, and blend. Pour the mixture into the baking pan.
Place the metal screen on top of the mixture in the baking pan, then gently push it down into the pan until the mixture covers it.
Bring the screen up, place it on a sheet of newspaper, and press it flat with the palm of your hand to squeeze away the water.
Let the screen-backed paper mixture dry in the sun for several hours. When the paper is thoroughly dry, peel it from the screen backing and trim the edges with scissors.

What Happens
The recycled newspaper has the texture of a gray egg carton and can be decorated with markers, crayons, paints, pencils, or pens.

Why It Works
Newspaper pulp—a blend of sulfite pulp and ground cellulose fibers—when formed into a sheet over a screen, dries into paper again. The cornstarch—a sizing material—is added to the mixture to give the paper a smooth surface and prevent too much ink absorption. Any discarded paper—paper bags, computer punch cards, junk mail—can be made into pulp.

Bizarre Facts

The first paper, invented in China in 105 C.E. by Ts'ai Lun, the Emperor Ho-Ti's minister of public works, was made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree, fishnets, old rags, and waste hemp.
For hundreds of years, paper was made by hand from the pulp of rags. Rag pulp is still used today to make most high-quality bond paper.
Toilet paper and facial tissues are made from wood pulp treated with plant resins to make it absorbent.
The average American uses 640 pounds of paper and paperboard every year.
Money is made out of cotton, not paper.
Before the advent of paper, most documents were written on parchment (made from the skin of sheep or goats) or vellum (made from the skin of calves). A single book three hundred pages long would require the skins of an estimated eighteen sheep.
The watermark was discovered by accident. In 1282, a small piece of wire caught in the paper press being used at the Fabrino Paper Mill made a line in the finished paper that could be seen by holding the paper up to the light. The papermakers realized a design made from wire would create a decorative watermark, which could also be used on banknotes to thwart counterfeiters.

Paper Tiger
Paper can be made inexpensively from hemp. However, in 1937, cotton growers, fearing competition from hemp growers, lobbied against marijuana (the dried leaves of the hemp plant) to make hemp illegal. In 1999, Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura signed legislation making hemp farming legal in Minnesota.

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