going green-er

 we are fairly green.

we have a garden.

we recycle.

we compost.

we mulch our grass.

at the end of every week we have one trash bag for the garbage men to haul away.

i think that's pretty good for five people.

recently my brother told us about paper briquettes that they use in in other parts of the world for heating, cooking etc.

take your newspapers, junk mail, kids school papers and make logs that will burn up to two hours each.

we were in.

on saturday we had everyone over and the boys spent the afternoon working on a contraption.

basically you just need something that will squeeze all of the water out of your paper mush.

here's what they masterminded.

after watching many youtube videos they decided they needed pvc pipe, wood plunger, a frame and a jack.

 once you have some sort of contraption built you need a bucket full of paper that has been soaked for two or three days.

looks yummy, no?

then you take a plaster mixer and blend it into a mushy goo.

 it's not as bad once it's mixed. 

scoop pulp into the container

 

and push down with all your might.

realize that there aren't enough holes for the water to get out of and drill some more.

in the end the guys ended up pressing as much water as they could by hand and then built a frame and used a jack to get out the rest.

when most of the water is out you pull out a compressed brick.

do it a few more times and you get these.

they will have to stay in the green house for a week or so to completely dry.

some of you may be thinking we are crazy but here is our reasoning.

1-less material that has to be recycled or thrown away.

2-we camp a lot and, although we know how to start fires with kindling and other fire starter, lighting one of these suckers is going to be way easier.

3-we have a fire pit which means we either have to bring wood home when we camp, buy it, scavenge it in the city limits or buy those nasty compressed logs from the store. by doing these paper bricks we don't have to have wood lying around if we don't want it, we don't have to try to find wood and we don't have to spend money on chemically treated pressed logs.

it's a win win win.