Starter Kit. Idea 50 of 500. Cluster 3
Handmade paper and stationery
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Make or buy a small batch of handmade paper and bind 20 notebooks with local cloth covers. Leave them on consignment with two bookshops and one hotel gift shop for a month. At the end, ask each shop what sold and what customers asked for. A reorder, or a price customers paid without complaint, is the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors and residents who buy notebooks as gifts, and hotel shops that want something light and local to stock.
- What leaves today
- A notebook sold to a visitor could be made anywhere; handmade local paper keeps the whole product on the island, fibre to cover.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask which paper makers they know and whether they supply shops.
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask how waste water from a small paper workshop should be handled.
Check before you spend
That the fibres used are legally sourced, that waste water is safely disposed of, and that shops will take stock on fair terms.
Find out these three numbers
- What will shops near the sites pay for a handmade notebook?
- How many sheets can the workshop make in a day?
- What does a sheet of handmade paper cost to make?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.