BOREAL AGREEMENT MEDIA COVERAGE

CANOPY IS HIRING

FEATURED

Canopy Supports Non-wood paper investment - MORE...

Ecopaper Database Updated - MORE...

EVENTS

Breakfast Under the Trees - MORE...

Quill and Quire | May 30, 2008

By Tabassum Siddiqui

Environmental group Markets Initiative has developed a new paper made from wheat straw waste that could eventually serve as an alternative to the regular paper made of wood pulp fibre currently used by book and magazine publishers.

The paper, known as Wheat Sheet, is made out of pulp from straw left over from grain harvests. Markets Initiative partnered with Canadian Geographic magazine and technical experts at the Alberta Research Council for an exploratory trial to create paper made from wheat waste. After a four-year development period, an initial batch of the paper was produced for the June issue of Canadian Geographic, which is printed entirely on Wheat Sheet. The paper used for the magazine contains 20% wheat straw and 40% recycled fibre content, with the balance coming from wood pulp.

We've been trying to find creative ways to alleviate the pressure on our boreal forests, explains Markets Initiative executive director Nicole Rycroft. We envisioned a whole new way of producing paper in Canada. We wanted to take this out of the laboratory and put it into a high-profile commercial venture, and Canadian Geographic was very excited to help chart a difference course.

The venture took some time to develop because few Canadian pulp and paper mills had the means to turn wheat waste into pulp, Rycroft notes, so the wheat straw pulp for the Wheat Sheet paper had to be sourced from China.

Because of that, the paper, which was made by a U.S. mill, was only created on a trial basis and won't be commercially available for some time.

What's holding this back at this point is that there are no pulp mills in Canada that can take wheat stock and turn it into pulp that's the piece that we need to move forward, and that's where publisher support has been key, Rycroft says, noting that with the support of Canadian publishers eager for environmentally-friendly alternatives to wood-pulp-based paper, Markets Initiative has been urging the federal government to fund retrofitting of Canadian mills in order to produce paper made of wheat and flax waste in the near future.

While Markets Initiative has approached book publishers about the potential of paper like Wheat Sheet, the group decided to develop a magazine-grade paper first. Rycroft says the paper used for the Canadian Geographic trial (the magazine will return to regular paper for its next issue) had the same quality as th paper the magazine normally prints on.

The reason we decided not to proceed with a trial paper for books is that we thought if we could produce a paper that lives up to the photographic needs of a magazine, then it should be easier to produce papers that are less technically demanding, Rycroft says.

Rycroft says Canadian publishers and printers are working with Markets Initiative to actively improve their environmental performance. She adds that 80% of publishers carbon footprint and biodiversity impact involves paper though over 120 Canadian publishers have made a formal commitment to move away from printing on paper made of fibres from old-growth forests, the industry continues to seek a a long-term sustainable solution.

Doug Pepper at McClelland & Stewart has expressed interest in these sorts of papers, and leaders like [Knopf Canada publisher] Louise Dennys have definitely been intrigued. Likewise, Rob Sanders at Greystone Books  they're? definitely a publisher who has been watching this with a lot of interest,Rycroft says.

While there appears to be a market for alternative sources of paper such as Wheat Sheet, which costs about the same as regular paper, making it a commercially viable prospect for publishers and printers remains a ways off, Rycroft says.

We've identified hundreds of commercial paper consumers ready to buy it, Rycroft points out. My hope is that within the next three to five years, this will be commercially viable here in Canada.