Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren folk bomb here it's become an evergreen piece of
Speaker 1: advice for aspiring writers. Put your button the chair and
Speaker 1: write a first draft, no matter how crappy. Now, thanks
Speaker 1: to a breakthrough in chemical technology, that first draft can
Speaker 1: be literal crap, or at least printed on it. Researchers
Speaker 1: announced at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in
Speaker 1: March that it's possible to turn manure from cows, elephants, goats,
Speaker 1: and other grass munchers into yes paper. As you may
Speaker 1: already know, paper is made from cellulos that usually comes
Speaker 1: from trees. Not every place has a lot of trees,
Speaker 1: but as we all know, everybody poops, and some of
Speaker 1: those poopers leave patties around for stepping in or collecting
Speaker 1: if you're of a mind to collect poop like these
Speaker 1: a c S scientists are One of the researchers who
Speaker 1: presented this idea at the a c S meeting. In question,
Speaker 1: Alexander Bismarck, PhD. Was driving around crete and watched goats
Speaker 1: eat grass and poop it out. He thought that maybe
Speaker 1: the goats were doing to the grass what paper manufacturers
Speaker 1: due two trees turn it into cellulose that could be
Speaker 1: made into paper, because of course that's what you think
Speaker 1: of while you're driving around an idyllic island. Cretion excretions.
Speaker 1: Some animals, it turns out, do a pretty good job
Speaker 1: pooping out paper ready cellulose, depending on which animal is
Speaker 1: doing the manure manufacturing, Bismarck said in a press statement.
Speaker 1: Up to that manure is cellulose, which is then easily
Speaker 1: accessible to make paper from trees, the trees have to
Speaker 1: be ground way down by a machine into a pulp
Speaker 1: before being made into proper paper. Goats do that work
Speaker 1: for free every day of their grass muncheon poop leaven lives.
Speaker 1: The only thing they require is more grass, which makes
Speaker 1: more poop, which makes more paper, and they need some
Speaker 1: water to drink and maybe scritches on their little chins.
Speaker 1: But either way, it's a more environmentally friendly process than
Speaker 1: traditional papermaking. And it's not just goats. The researchers moved
Speaker 1: onto piles of patties from horses, cows, and elephants. To
Speaker 1: elephants in wildlife parks in Africa are number one at
Speaker 1: going number two at the San Francisco Zoo alone, an
Speaker 1: adult male African elephant can produce three hundred pounds. That's
Speaker 1: six kilos of pooh. That's a lot of potential paper.
Speaker 1: The first uses for this pooh paper would probably be industrial.
Speaker 1: According to the researchers, it could filter wastewater before it's
Speaker 1: released into the environment, which seems fitting. But poop pyrus,
Speaker 1: or nanopaper, as the researchers rather boringly call it, could
Speaker 1: also be used to write on. So don't give up,
Speaker 1: fellow writers, Our first drafts could soon be really truly crappy.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Kristen hall Geisler and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics with big potential, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. M