Joining a green industry booming with innovation, Karl Wald’s claim to sustainable fame the past four years has been elephant poop.
During the weekend-long Green Festival in Denver, Wald showed off his popular product — stationary paper and gifts made from 70 percent elephant dung and 30 percent post-consumer materials — by offering free samples to passersby.
Wald’s initial sales pitch of “would you like a free piece of poo” perks people’s ears, but it’s Wald’s efforts to save elephants in Sri Lanka that drives sales, he said.
Wald’s company, Mr. Ellie Pooh, is attempting to save the massive beasts by making them an asset to local villagers. Wild elephant populations in Sri Lanka have been diminishing for the last 50 years as farmers kill grazing elephants that threaten their crops, Wald said.
By creating jobs Sri Lanka for people who make the dung paper by hand, Wald said the elephant killings will cease.
“You hire 50 people in a village, it doesn’t make much of a difference. But if you hire 1,000 people in village, you’re talking real numbers of people who will depend on those elephants,” said Wald, who has created 250 jobs in Sri Lanka so far.
Mr. Ellie Pooh was among several businesses and non-profits during the weekend festival that now use green products to tackle larger social issues. The festival was a joint project of Global Exchange and Green America.
“People have been selling poopie paper for the past 20 years, but we brought in the conservation element that makes it successful,” Wald said.
Like Wald’s business, Fanja Rakotonirina hopes the hats and bags she purchases from Madagascar and then sells in the U.S. will help conserve rain forests in Madagascar. The forests, Rakotonirina said, are ravaged by farmers who are looking for fertile land, which is at a premium in Madagascar.
By supporting the local economy in Madagascar, U.S. entrepreneurs have helped create more than 400 jobs in the region, Rakotonirina said.
“The reason we created this business is to have the villagers preserve the rain forest by making sustainable work a way of life,” Rakotonirina said.
Other people like David Ward use the environment to create better social conditions for people in the United States. Ward’s non-profit, The N.I.C.E. Corporation, uses community gardens to create a community atmosphere with the public and homeless people working together. This year Ward said three gardens, including one in Boulder and one in Denver, are already in full swing with up to nine others in the makings.
“If we can develop a city farm belt every five miles, we will be able to walk to the farm, help the homeless and meet our neighbors that we are too busy to talk to,” said Ward.
Anthony Bowe 303-954-1661 or abowe@denverpost.com
