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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, November 24, 2004: When Brian and Cindy Smucker visited Sri Lanka last January on a trip sponsored by Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade association, they were looking for unique products to sell in their store back home. The Smuckers found what they wanted when they visited the Elephant Millennium Foundation. Brian Smucker explains, “In Sri Lanka, elephants are used as draft animals and when they grow old, they can be put to sleep. They are also killed in confrontations with farmers as agricultural land encroaches on their habitat. The foundation tries to raise local and world consciousness about the elephants’ plight.” The news release adds, “The Smuckers learned the foundation had started a project to turn dung into paper as another way to demonstrate the usefulness of elephants. Back in the United States, National Public Radio aired a report on the project. The foundation forwarded the subsequent inquiries about it to the Smuckers, who were overwhelmed with orders before their first shipment of the paper had even arrived.” Brian Smucker says, ” We discovered that our store and the Philadelphia Zoo were the two places in the country that are actually importing this stuff. The leaves and bark eaten and digested by an elephant produce dung that’s dried and boiled with margosa leaves to disinfect it. The elephant is doing the first part — of breaking down the grasses and the rest is pretty much the conventional handmade paper process.”

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