Around 12 years ago I got sucked into the world of paper mâché clay and spent about a year delving deep into making pottery out of it. I made small pots, large pots, weird little organizer trays and assorted things out of it. It’s great for display pieces but not great for anything that needs to hold water. It’s wonderful for interior display pieces, but not for anything that you’d want to put outside.

There are many recipes and detailed instructions on how to make it, so I won’t delve into it here, that’s not what this post is about.

A few years back I kept having issues with my identity stolen and we saw folx swiping stuff out of our recycling bin. So we bought a shredder and started to shred all the credit card offers that arrived. This correlated with less stolen identity issues. But it left us with another problem, and one we didn’t know about for awhile.

We had been bagging up the shredded paper and putting it into our recycle bin, not knowing this is a major no no in our area. Shredded paper is not recyclable apparently the machines they use to sort out the paper but open the shred and blow them everywhere. It makes a huge mess and they ask that you don’t put it into the recycling. Instead we’re asked to put it into curbside compost, which is an alternative program the home owner has to pay to be in. It is also pretty expensive in our area. So I’m left with what to do with the shredded paper.

In the past I have used it in my compost bin, but I haven’t been composting and I am also generating more than should go into a compost bin. I have also used it as a weed block- it works surprisingly well under mulch. These two uses have been my primary manner of reuse. But I don’t have space to store it for a whole winter and thought I’d give some other manners of reuse a try.

First up was a deep dive into paper pulp briquettes and a mix of paper pulp and spent coffee grounds. These are actually pretty nice and work pretty well in my charcoal grill and pellet stove. But honestly they are a huge amount of work for not a lot of burn output. That said they are good for the solo stove and my mini twig stove. If you want to read more about this area of my recent time suck head over to my weird stuff/obsessions/ADHD hyperfixation blog. It’s where I detail stuff that doesn’t fit here or Less is More Healthy.

Anyway, after making a hundred or so paper briquettes I thought about my experience with making paper mâché clay and the off shoot- papercrete. There are a lot of versions of papercrete but the one I’m most interested in is the sort that would allow me to make waterproof pots that I could use outside for planting or whatever. Papercrete is the answer. It’s really pretty (if you like the look of concrete) but also very sturdy and water proof or resistant to the point that people make planters out of it and it stands up. There are also industrial versions of it.

Anyway I’ve got several buckets of pulp breaking down in my basement getting ready for me to make some pots out of papercrete.
Here is a very good recipe and instructions on how to make the papercrete. Her whole channel, though not updated in a long time is really great.

And of course is Jonni Good’s weatherproof paper mache clay recipe. She’s the OG when it comes to paper mache clay and has a variety of recipes for making the stuff, but her recipe uses white glue or PVA glue as a component which I don’t really see in a lot of papercrete recipes.