Crumple was an event organized by a group in my batch. It was their CAS project. The aim was to take a lot of waste paper and convert it into paper that can be used. They used water to convert the waste paper into a mache and then used glue as a binding agent to create a wet mixture. That is when we as volunteers come into the picture. We took one glass full of that mixture, churned it on a strainer inside a water tub and carefully placed it onto a sheet for drying where it would turn into usable paper after a few days.
The process is quite lengthy and tiresome due to the nature of the mixture and the difficulty of spreading it as an A4 sheet. But working together makes the task much quicker and easier, which is why we were able to make over 50 sheets within the hour. We split up into teams of 2 to divide the tasks. One person would fill the glass with the mixture, another person would spread the mixture onto the strainer, and while they do that, the first person will lift the rim of the strainer and flip the strainer on the sheet carefully. Teamwork made the process go from 5 minutes per sheet to less than 2 minutes per sheet. Initially, it was difficult working with someone on such a precarious and delicate task. But eventually, we fell into a rhythm that allowed for flawless execution and impeccable teamwork.
This activity holds a lot of significance because currently, waste paper is almost always thrown away and sometimes recycled to use for paper bags. But with this, we have a viable way to create usable writing paper from it. This presents a big opportunity since paper comes from trees and the world’s paper usage is causing a massive amount of deforestation. The process is not perfect, it still uses glue as a resource, but at the same time, the amount of paper that could be reused with this method presents a need for change.
All in all, this activity has been a valuable learning experience for me. First of all, I learned that there are ways to reuse paper that has been deemed as waste. Secondly, I learned that no matter what the task is, good teamwork can make any task much easier and faster. Last but not least I learned that although fighting climate change and deforestation is an easy thing to say and flaunt, in practice it is actually a much more difficult and delicate task.
