Linen, straw and hemp have been primary material sources for paper throughout the centuries. After the 1850s, when Friedrich Gottlieb Keller created a revolution by crushing wood with a wet grindstone, our vast natural forests began to be felled to produce paper. Although paper making from wood is a fairly recent innovation, it has created a terrible impact on the environment, which obviously cannot be ignored. Paper is one of the basic necessities today, not just in its ordinary form but also as an increasing variety of products and derivatives. To meet this growing demand for paper, huge tracts of lands with trees and forests are wiped out at an immense scale; this demand is steadily on the increase with a proportionate growth in population. The paper industry expects that demand for paper will double by 2050, keeping pace with the population growth.

The requirement for ream after ream of white paper is putting a huge strain on the world’s forest reserves. While only around 10% of the trees cut down for paper are farmed or replanted, easily accessible and inexpensive sources of wood are fast disappearing. As a result of the rapid consumption of virgin forests in places around the world, forest restoration has not been able to keep pace with the vastly growing demand for wood products. In the effort to curb this trend, many communities have started replanting clear-cuts with fast-growing trees. The use of recycled paper - which has drawn attention for its environment-friendly features - has slumped. In its stead, non-wood papers, which do not depend on forest resources, have come into the spotlight.

In the past, recycled paper spread as a way of cutting costs by reusing resources. More recently, growing awareness of the need to preserve the environment and prevent over harvesting of forests has given even greater importance to the use of recycled paper as a way of stretching our depleting forest resources.

Japan has, since a long time, established collection routes for old newspapers and cardboard and now leads the world in the reuse of paper. The paper-making industry undertook a campaign to raise the ratio of recycled paper to 55% by 1994 and actually succeeded in bringing the level to 53% as of the end of the fiscal year (March 31, 1995). But the recent Yen appreciation has caused a sudden climb in imports of cheap foreign pulp, undercutting the market price for used paper and forcing the dealers out of business. The paper that has consequently been left uncollected is disposed of along with ordinary rubbish, rapidly swelling trash quantities and overburdening incinerators. This problem has been further exacerbated by the growing use of special papers for office equipment. Such varieties are difficult to reuse and have always been disposed of as ordinary trash. Against this backdrop, the reuse and recycling has slowed down.

The large-scale use of recycled paper also causes its own set of problems. For one thing, a new environmental problem is caused by the chlorine bleach that is employed to whiten it. For another, consumers tend to shun recycled paper because they feel that it is more expensive than the ones in the market. Now, however, non-wood paper is stealing the spotlight from recycled paper with its many problems, being stronger than ordinary paper as also imparting a feeling of quality.

Replacing trees once they are cut down takes a long time. In warm climates, it takes 30 to 40 years for newly planted trees to become harvestable, and in northern regions, the time span is 100 years. Even trees that mature rapidly, such as eucalyptus, take about a decade.

Products made from non-wood papers have been increasing steadily, and at present 50 varieties have flooded the market. Green paper could use sugarcane chaff, cotton, seaweed, straw and other materials. Non-wood pulp, however, accounts for a mere 0.1% of the total consumption, and it is not yet so popular. The main reason is that for some products these papers are about 10% more expensive than the ordinary paper. But consumers are growing more concerned about the environment, which will probably raise the demand for non-wood papers in the future.

There is a mass awareness of the ecological impacts keeping in mind the climatic changes as also other changes affecting our lives. Today, people are taking responsibility for the causes of these changes and are trying to make an effort to reverse or at least stop them. Going green is the new motive that everyone wants to work on. Thus, environmentalists and industrialists are looking for an alternative to tree-based paper making. Even if these efforts might add to the expenses, consumers are ready to pay a bit more to join hands with the movement.

The good part is that there is not just one but many available alternatives that are being put to practice today. Each fibrous alternative to the paper has different properties suited to a different use. All of these may not be used for writing because of their surface structures, but many form excellent alternatives of various paper products. This not just helps reduce tree paper but might also give an alternative to replace some of non-biodegradable or non eco-friendly materials used for making products like plastic.
Thus, ‘green paper’ is not just an idea or an alternate of wood paper, but a revolution as a future material itself, which will be used and reused to its fullest potential to regain what has been lost as well as to balance the nature-human cycle again. q

Jalaj Chatwal
Swati Chaudhary
Vatsala Laktotia
NIFT Students, New Delhi

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