Reducing Our Impact on Environment: Tree free Paper
Sean Sublette, a meteorologist with Climate Central puts the role of collective & individual action and climate crisis in perspective: “No one person fixes this, but no one person created it, either. It’s a big daunting concept of a problem to solve and nobody solves it by themselves. It takes everybody to do a little bit where you can.”
With that in mind, we have continued to challenge ourselves to find better raw materials for our products. This could be a recycled cloth rag that is used to make Chindi Rug, or Handmade tree free paper used in the diaries that we supply. Let's talk more about the less known "tree-free paper".
What is Tree Free Paper?
A paper made from industrial and agricultural waste without a need to chop down trees.
How is it made?
In the process of making conventional paper, trees are the most critical raw materials. It is estimated that about 24 trees are cut to make 1 ton of standard office paper.
Globally, some 177,000 square kilometres are lost each year, which is equivalent to 50 football fields every minute (Source: WWF)
A range of natural materials can be used to make this paper including banana stumps, corn husk, coffee husk, cotton waste, tea leaves. The process starts by cooking all the different waste to remove lignin. This is a component that otherwise makes the husk or other waste too stiff to be processed into paper, and hence, it needs to be removed.
Pos that, all the husk is chopped into smaller pieces, and mashed into pulp. This pulp is put into mould vat. Once it is out from the mould vat, each sheet of paper is hung up to dry.
Why do we need such paper?
Tree Free Paper aims to solve multiple problems at once.
- Since it is mostly handmade, it provides employment opportunities to local communities
- Most eco-friendly alternative to conventional mill paper
- No trees are cut to make this but only good things that no longer are disposed in landfill - think cotton rags and waste from textile industry
- Due to the use of raw materials of varying colours, this paper can be given a unique colour, without needing any chemical dyes. E.g. coffee husk mixed with white cotton can provide wonderful light brown to dark brown hues