Some alarmist Happy Mutants will destroy this thread by repeatedly posting that the sky is falling and that we’re all gonna die, but…
About fifteen years ago, I got a pet bunny on impulse. Rabbits like to shred newspapers and toss them around their ‘homes’, so I checked to see if it would kill my bunny to use the grocery store bargain flyers in the bottom of her ‘home’. As it would turn out, the heavy metal inks are so last century. The soy-based inks are so much cheaper, easier on the printing presses, and cleaner for printers to work with that they just plain fell out of favor.
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One of the widgets that was included in the home I bought five years ago did exactly that- you loaded the newspapers (or junk mail, copies of the Watchtower left behind by over-zealous missionaries, etc.) into it, and you turned a crank that rolled it up. When the machine got full, you pulled the crank out, and used ridiculously long twist ties to bundle the roll up to keep it from unraveling.
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Also, if you grind up the pulp fine enough, you can make artisan paper from it using a box screen. (that was one thing I did growing up.)
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I’m thinking about pellets for a pellet furnace. Would love to have one of those in my house, even willing to pay my neighbors a $1 if I can (neatly) go through their blue bins.
Instead of a massive pulp patty with manual labour, a pellet would be simpler as you are using hand-strength to compress a much smaller item.
Interesting.
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Eh, not usually. Circulars and such (at least here) have been switched over to vegetable-based ink for years now. Higher end materials such as photos or glossy coloured printing may well contain nasties. But not your cheap-ass run-of-the-mill (heh) advert flyers…
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I was thinking about something along these lines before but was curious about the toxicity/pollutants in the leftover water.
I’d also considered adding some ground up paraffin wax or old crayons to use as firestarter.
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I use leftover sawdust (from woodworking), old candle remains, and cardboard egg cartons to make my fire starters. Mix the first two into a thick mash and stuff it (while hot) into the egg crates. You can easily cut or tear off individual ‘eggs’ and use them to start logs directly. Reuse is > Recycle. Still not as good as Reduce, I guess.
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How about extruding the pulp through a yard sale meat grinder?
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You’re missing the fingers. This is like posting a picture of a wood-chipper minus the flailing legs.
But yeah, something like this, with a solar motor turning it (Eco the shit out this process).
Overall purchased pellets aren’t all that expensive but being able to roll your own will be handy when everything goes to heck*.
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Oh, you’re supposed to use a wooden pusher that looks like half of a rolling pin. Everyone loses the plunger immediately, and substitutes either those little toy bats from ‘Bat Day’ or a big wooden dowel.
I’ll let you fall down the rabbithole that is Papercrete, but the Papercrete enthusiasts use an old garbage disposal screwed to a wooden table to pulp the papier into mache.
Naw, man - A WINDMILL! A WINDMILL!
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