A revolutionary new way to build your own home for next to nothing. Papercrete is essentially a type of industrial strength paper mach? made with paper and cardboard, sand and portland cement. The concept is quite simple -- you build a mixer (essentially a huge kitchen blender), mix the dry ingredients with water to form a slurry, cast the slurry into blocks or panels, and let it dry. When it hardens up, papercrete is lightweight (it's 80 percent air), an excellent insulator (R 2.8 per inch), holds its shape even when wet, and is remarkably strong (compressive strength of 260 psi). And, since it contains paper fibers, it has considerable tensile strength as well as compressive strength. Papercrete is a remarkable building material, and is remarkably inexpensive, since all the ingredients (except for the cement) are free or nearly free.
This book contains all of the papercrete articles from the first five issues of Earth Quarterly. We are also including University of Arizona architecture professor Mary Hardin's article on paper bale construction, since it is another innovative way to utilize "waste" paper as a building material.
We need to emphasize that papercrete and paper adobe are experimental! Mistakes have been made, and will continue to be made. Because they are so new, there is no proof that papercrete and paper adobe will stand up to the elements for the long term (20 years or more). However, it seems reasonable that if proper precautions are taken, that papercrete and paper adobe will last indefinitely.
Building with Papercrete and Adobe 
A revolutionary new way to build your own home for next to nothing. Papercrete is essentially a type of industrial strength paper mach? made with paper and cardboard, sand and portland cement. The concept is quite simple -- you build a mixer (essentially a huge kitchen blender), mix the dry ingredients with water to form a slurry, cast the slurry into blocks or panels, and let it dry. When it hardens up, papercrete is lightweight (it's 80 percent air), an excellent insulator (R 2.8 per inch), holds its shape even when wet, and is remarkably strong (compressive strength of 260 psi). And, since it contains paper fibers, it has considerable tensile strength as well as compressive strength. Papercrete is a remarkable building material, and is remarkably inexpensive, since all the ingredients (except for the cement) are free or nearly free.