This is one of those topics that is very interesting to me but will make most of you roll your eyes with the foolishness of it all, so it’s hard to know how much to write. Perhaps at the bottom of this I’ll put a Tl;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) statement.
As you know, some of my obsessions are saving the planet, camping, prototyping and fire. Well, I have a little project that combines all of those things, plus has the added benefit of making my house smell weird.
On the camping sites I’ve found that some people make campfire fuel by pressing paper pulp into bricks. I have made recycled paper with my students for years (the banner picture is from a project we did this week) and am no stranger to the process, but I’ve never made ‘bricks’ before. The gadget that people use costs $30-$40, so of course I’ve decided that there must be a cheaper, worse way.
I’ve had a bag of old receipts and bank statements from 1996 just sitting on the floor in the basement for months. This seemed like the perfect way to dispose of them. For science!
Some people who use the brick maker say that you can just crumple and wet the paper down, but since I am working off script, I tried various ways to make pulp with the least amount of effort. Turns out that sort-of ripping stuff up (or not) and simmering on the stove for several hours works. Give it a stir a couple of times an hour and it breaks up pretty well. Warning: It smells bad. Not overwhelmingly bad, but certainly not good.
When I started this last week, I had some cardboard tubes from inside the bolts of shepherd costume-cloth. I chopped them into ‘logs’ and stuffed the pulp inside. A cool idea, but way too labor-intensive to be a regular thing.
What seems to be easiest is pouring the pulp into my colander (it is so, so hot for such a long time!) and then standing on it to press out the water, making a round ‘brick’. (That part involves me balancing on a pot, which made Lloyd roll his eyes and leave the kitchen. Really? That’s the strangest part of this process to you?)
Anyway, I am almost through that bag of sensitive paperwork. Come next camping trip: good-bye, 20-year-old cancelled checks and credit card statements! You shall meet your end – in fire!!
TL;DR – Lloyd is looking into a special home for me.