ABOUT DODGY SUSTAINABILITY
large industry paper making for your regular boring old plain printing or art paper uses alot of water. In most cases "Even the crispest piece of A4 pulp paper has swallowed up to 20 litres of water during its production." [1] Thats for a single sheet of paper! This takes into account the growing and farming of trees, turning those trees into pulp using water, and then bleaching the pulp. "The bleaching process is the most water-intense part of the production process in pulp paper mills." [2]
"THERE IS ENOUGH PAPER ON PLANET EARTH ALREADY"
- DODGY ROGER THE PULP PROFESSOR
At DODGY PAPER we use very little water.
To make 150* A4 sheets we use roughly 40L of water.
*we sometimes make more but the water gets pretty stanky...
Since the very beginnings of our dodgy journey into paper making we have always repurposed and reused as much as possible for all parts of our process and business practices. This came from an ingrown nature towards what I like to call "Creative Hoarding". Yes I like to hoard things, but everything has a use and alternative repurposed use.
We use waste acetate from a local screen printer @redwoodpress to press and dry all our paper. The wood we make our paper making moulds comes from the scraps bin at a friends carpentry workshop. When purchasing equipment we look for second-hand, such as our recent drying rack upgrade had been in use for 30 years at a local sign painting factory.
We send out our orders in compostable mailers using rigid 100% recycled eco-board, and we use paper tape instead of cellotape.
We get a kick out of reusing, repurposing and
recycling paper and other things. It helps us stay creative!
I use all kinds of waste, scrap and junk ( unwanted ) paper to make our dodgy paper batches. All our premium blends and superfine are made from acid-free archival fine art printing offcuts gathered from a few local Melbourne fine art printing studios. Waste paper is everywhere, and everything that was paper can be made into paper again and again and again.
Below is a short documentary by So Project where
I explain a bit of my process and ethos behind Dodgy paper.
And here are a couple podcasts I've talked on about the dodgy process
Bench Talk Episode 55 : Lousy Ink & dodgy paper
On Process : Dodgy paper on hand made recycled paper
Creative Confessions Episode 8 : Dodgy paper - sustainability in art
Stay Dodgy!
Stay creative!
- Dodgy Roger the Pulp Professor