The Wheat Sheet

In North America, as in most other parts of the world, paper is predominantly made from wood-based fiber. Only 9% is produced from alternative fibers such as agricultural residues, and most of this production takes place in China and India.[1]

The technology for manufacturing paper from agricultural residues was successfully demonstrated and test-marketed in the late 1990s by Arbokem, a Canadian company which manufactured office printing paper made from 50 percent wheat straw and 50 percent post-consumer recycled fiber. Arbokem also worked on an agri-pulp based newsprint and is currently in the planning stages of a project to produce agri-pulp pizza boxes in Mexico.

The Environmental Paper Network estimates that 262 million metric tons of non-wood plant fibers are theoretically available for papermaking in North America, including nearly 93 million metric tons of straw. Canadian Geographic, a leading geography publication in Canada, is tapping into this potential by launching the first ever magazine made from wheat straw. The June 2008 “Wheat Sheet” edition of this magazine is setting an example for all North American paper and pulp industries by demonstrating the technology that uses agricultural waste instead of trees.

The majority of Canada’s paper is currently made from Boreal forests and Temperate rainforests. According to the senior editor of Canadian Geographic, about 70 percent of the paper the magazine normally uses is made from virgin pulp and the remainder from recycled paper, also originally made from virgin pulp.

The Wheat Sheet edition of the magazine is made from 20 percent wheat straw, 40 percent post-consumer recycled fiber and 40 percent totally chlorine free virgin wood fiber. Although it uses 60 percent less trees, it looks and feels “just like any other issue of Canadian Geographic.” The magazine’s Editor’s Notebook points out that wheat straw provides a good alternative source for paper as it consumes less energy, water, and is less chemical-intensive.

Canadian Geographic partnered with technical experts from the Alberta Research Council (ARC), an environmental group—Markets Initiative, NewPage paper producer and Dollco publications’ printer to make paper out of wheat waste. The partners of the Wheat Sheet project believe that the production and use of Wheat Sheet allows for a win-win situation for the North American paper industry, farming communities, and the environment. In addition to potentially saving 100 million trees each year, this sustainable technology is “sparking a brand new resource industry” that produces paper through a mix of fibers and agricultural residue while providing a new source of income for farmers “willing to bale and sell wheat straw to pulp-and-paper companies.” The Wheat Sheet Backgrounder adds that using straw-based pulps in paper manufacture can also “improve print quality, increase strength and reduce weight for a given paper thickness.”

Wheat Sheet promises to remove the current dependency on forests as Canada’s wheat harvest produces a vast amount of underutilized wheat straw, an estimated 21 million tons that could be used to produce 8 millions tons of pulp—equivalent to the paper volume used by the North American newspaper industry every year. Unlike oats and barley, two of the major cereal grains grown on the Canadian Prairies and the American mid-west, wheat straw is not used for animal feed.

Ironically, this new venture had to source wheat pulp from China since there is no straw-pulping facility in Canada. The biggest challenge, as Robert Wellwood, ARC’s manager of forest products puts it, is "changing the mindset of pulp-mill owners in Canada." He adds that Canadian papermakers have to understand that the process for producing wheat pulp in itself is neither complicated nor extremely expensive. What remains a challenge, however, is convincing the pulp and paper industry to retrofit their existing mills or build new ones, a capital investment which can cost from $50 million up to $2 billion.

Markets Initiative is currently working on encouraging existing Canadian mills located near agricultural lands to start producing non-wood pulps to be used for paper. Nicole Rycroft, Executive Director of Canada-based Markets Initiative, adds that pressuring the federal government to fund retrofitting of Canadian paper and pulp mills is equally important as lobbying other stakeholders, including book publishers for their support in choosing environment-friendly alternatives to wood-pulp based paper.

Today, 71 of Canada’s leading publishing houses and 41 U.S. publishing companies have committed to eliminate the use of ancient forest papers from their books.

1. Environmental Paper Network (2007). State of the Paper Industry, pp. 43-44 at http://www.environmentalpaper.org/stateofthepaperindustry/.