By Heidi Trautmann

Many members attended this workshop, led by the artist Roya Alagheband, it brought new aspects into recycling waste paper and using it for useful containers and artistic purposes such as modelling. Roya explained to me that research was done on ‘papercrete’ to use it for construction, for bricks, delivering properties such as fire resistance, lighter weight, less cement, better isolation against heat and cold and noise, in short: reduction of environmental impact…… but read the abstract I have found on internet at the end of my text, and there is a lot of literature on this development.

For the workshop we were asked to bring paper pulp soaked the night before and ready for use; the pulp they brought was made from different paper qualities such as newspaper, white waste paper, egg containers, carton. Furthermore, plastic containers to fit into each other, but also any other form for modelling it out, plus a bottle of oil. Also, plastic gloves and mask, as the cement is aggressive to skin and breath.

We were all curious to see what can be created with this new composition of paper pulp and cement. Roya had brought two bags of cement, one with normal cement, and one with white cement.

Now to the procedure as such: To the prepared paper pulp Roya added approximately 30% of cement and was kneading it properly for the first model, where two differently sized containers are placed into each other; these are first wiped with oil, the one inside and the smaller one outside, to later facilitate removal when dry. A portion of the papercrete mixture is placed at the bottom of the bigger container and the smaller container pressed into the mixture right into the centre, and the space between them filled with more papercrete up to the rim. The containers must now be pushed down several times onto the table to remove any air bubbles.

The outer container is to be cleaned now before covering the top with a wide adhesive tape crosswise and fixing it all around to keep all in place.

Now, we have to wait until the mixture is hard.

For model 2 we need to add more cement until it is formable into small cakes which are now plastered one by one into the inside of a form thus creating a wall of about one centimetre on all sides, when finished, it needs to be smoothed out with your hands and/or the back of a spoon, add some oil, if sticky.

For more artistic or decorative models, you may use prefabricated negative form made from plastic which are available at art shops to fill the inside.

And surely, you may form bricks in square plastic containers to build something, a small wall; there are no limits, new ideas come with doing.

Thank you, Roya, for making us aware of it and showing us the ways of processing.

Abstract

Utilization of concrete in the construction industry is increasing day by day. The increasing demand for concrete in the future is the major issue, for which an alternate option is to find out at a reduced or no additional cost and to reduce the environmental impact due to increase of cement industries that are important ingredient to economic development. It turns out urgent to find out alternate for the partial replacement of concrete and cement, as natural sources of aggregates are becoming exhausted. As large quantity of paper waste is generated from different countries all over the world which causes serious environmental problems, So in this present study abandoned paper waste was used as a partial replacement material in concrete,. Study indicates that 80% of the construction cost of a building was contributed by building material and still millions of people in developing countries like India are not able to afford the cost of construction of house. This study is based on potential use of light weight composite brick as a building material and potential use of paper waste for producing at low-cost. Experimental investigation was carried out to analyse optimization of mix for papercrete bricks depending upon the water absorption, compressive strength and unit weight. Papercrete bricks were prepared out of waste paper, and quarry dust with partial replacement of cement by another industrial by-product Fly Ash in varying proportions of 25%, 40% and 55%. The properties like mechanical strength, standard quality comparisons with the conventional bricks through standard tests like hardness, soundness, fire resistance and Cost-Benefit Analysis were performed and studied. The specimens of dimension 230mm x 110mm x 80mm were subjected to 7 Days and 28 days air curing and sun drying before tests were performed on them. Based on the study it was found that for non-load bearing walls papercrete bricks are best suited.