9 - Explore the properties and qualities of paper - initial thoughts and ideas
Paper is an everyday item in most peoples lives today and is taken for granted. By exploring the properties and qualities of paper, I'll have to dissect what goes into the papermaking process, and explore the impact this has on the environment.
To begin this investigation, I decided to take it back to the basics of paper, the properties and the structure of paper. Altering the properties of the paper changes the structure, and by making my own paper I can choose the type of paper I make as an outcome.
I'd also like to look at the impact I have on the environment and look into more factors which as a society we could improve to help the environment. A large factor of this is being deforestation and wasting paper. Most people take paper for granted and don't think about how much waste one produces on a daily basis.
Just from my experience, I work as a cashier in a busy retail shop and the amount of waste paper just from receipts alone means I can fill a small paper bin almost twice in a single shift. In college, particularly biology, we write 3/4 pages of notes in one lesson and usually get given 2/3 sheets as handouts, which is quite a lot for 2 lessons a week, and that's just my personal amount, so adding up all the students in college that's a vast amount of paper used daily. During my observations at college, there are barely any recycling paper bins, and in most classrooms, there's just one bin for all rubbish, so none of the paper which is thrown away in classrooms is actually recycled. Like a lot of people, my main mode of transport is my car, which is used daily to get to and from college, work and seeing friends. Doing some research I found my can produces 139g/km CO2, which compared to newer cars is about average but is quite a lot of CO2 produced from a single car, so by looking at the number of people that use cars, this amounts to a great deal of CO2.
The above factors are just a few things which I consider to be harming the environment, but bringing it back to the properties of paper, I want to produce the least amount of paper waste possible in this project. So I plan on keeping all my reflections and written work onto a blog, as its digital platform which doesn't require any printouts and minimizes the use of paper by quite a lot. I also think by recycling my own scrap paper into new paper which can be used for sketchbooks to document my developments for this investigation. By making my own paper to work on, I find any waste paper I create can be translated right back into blank sheets of handmade paper which I can use in my work, which will keep the amount of waste paper to a minimum.
Also by investigating more natural materials to create paper from, it will remove the need to use man-made paper in the first place. By using the natural pigments present in leaves and flowers, I could create a set of paints, from completely naturally sourced materials.
To begin, I'll start by making my own paper and constructing my own sketchbooks to record my progress.
To begin this investigation, I decided to take it back to the basics of paper, the properties and the structure of paper. Altering the properties of the paper changes the structure, and by making my own paper I can choose the type of paper I make as an outcome.
I'd also like to look at the impact I have on the environment and look into more factors which as a society we could improve to help the environment. A large factor of this is being deforestation and wasting paper. Most people take paper for granted and don't think about how much waste one produces on a daily basis.
Just from my experience, I work as a cashier in a busy retail shop and the amount of waste paper just from receipts alone means I can fill a small paper bin almost twice in a single shift. In college, particularly biology, we write 3/4 pages of notes in one lesson and usually get given 2/3 sheets as handouts, which is quite a lot for 2 lessons a week, and that's just my personal amount, so adding up all the students in college that's a vast amount of paper used daily. During my observations at college, there are barely any recycling paper bins, and in most classrooms, there's just one bin for all rubbish, so none of the paper which is thrown away in classrooms is actually recycled. Like a lot of people, my main mode of transport is my car, which is used daily to get to and from college, work and seeing friends. Doing some research I found my can produces 139g/km CO2, which compared to newer cars is about average but is quite a lot of CO2 produced from a single car, so by looking at the number of people that use cars, this amounts to a great deal of CO2.
The above factors are just a few things which I consider to be harming the environment, but bringing it back to the properties of paper, I want to produce the least amount of paper waste possible in this project. So I plan on keeping all my reflections and written work onto a blog, as its digital platform which doesn't require any printouts and minimizes the use of paper by quite a lot. I also think by recycling my own scrap paper into new paper which can be used for sketchbooks to document my developments for this investigation. By making my own paper to work on, I find any waste paper I create can be translated right back into blank sheets of handmade paper which I can use in my work, which will keep the amount of waste paper to a minimum.
Also by investigating more natural materials to create paper from, it will remove the need to use man-made paper in the first place. By using the natural pigments present in leaves and flowers, I could create a set of paints, from completely naturally sourced materials.
To begin, I'll start by making my own paper and constructing my own sketchbooks to record my progress.
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