On Monday, Jan. 5, a dozen sixth-grade students from Sedona Charter School were given a different kind of homework assignment.

“Remember to collect the lint from your parents’ dryers and bring it in,” Jason Voss said.

The students looked up from their tables and promised they would. Some had their hands in cooking pots, their fists closing and opening on mulch composed of water and shredded paper. Over the course of the next several weeks, the students would add their dryer lint to this mixture to create a
“heavy, pulpy, oatmeal-like stuff.”

Voss leaned over the table and drew a box, connecting its lines so that it took on a third dimension. He added hatch marks to make a screen and explained how the process works. The mulch is loaded onto the screened frame and soaked in a tub, after which the square sections are removed, flattened and dried.

“They use paper all the time, but they don’t know how it’s made. This is a good way to know,” Voss said. “At the end, the kids will have their own homemade pieces of paper, measuring approximately 10-by-12 inches.”

To read the full story, see the Wednesday, Jan. 7, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.