news & views - Australian Greens

In the early days of industrial paper making
forests and fresh water were regarded
as limitless resources. As the demand for
paper and packaging products increased
old growth forests were consumed at an
alarming pace. Recycling (or more accurately
downcycling) and plantation forests
have made some impact but the demand
continues to grow. Tragically, unique
old growth rainforests are still being
destroyed in Australia and elsewhere to
produce woodchips that are pulped to
produce often low value paper products.
Pulp mills, with all the associated
environmental problems, are being
forced to close in developed countries
such as Canada and are being moved
to countries with lower environmental
standards.
The ongoing conflict in Tasmania combines needless destruction
of old growth forests and attempts to add some economic
value to wood chipping by building a pulp mill. There are also
current proposals to build pulp mills in Victoria and South
Australia. All of these are seeking access to large volumes
of fresh water, large amounts of cheap energy, licences to
discharge large volumes of effluent and large direct or indirect
Government subsidies.
Meanwhile, a quiet revolution
has been brewing in Adelaide.
It has the potential to make the
current paper and pulp industries
as extinct as the dinosaurs.
After more than eight years of R&D, Adelaide company Papyrus
Australia has developed a revolutionary new engineering
process that can produce paper from waste banana trunks
without pulping. Banana trees (actually giant herbs) grow
rapidly in less than a year to produce fruit. Once the bunch is
harvested the trunk is cut down to rot and the whole process
is repeated each year with billions and billions of banana trees
around the world.
The patented Papyrus process is a near perfect environmental/industrial
closed loop which uses a rapidly renewable waste
fibre resource, no added water, less than 1% of the energy of
the current pulp and paper industry and no chemicals.
Waste banana sap can be returned to the plantation for
irrigation and hence there is no toxic effluent discharge. The
scale of the process is small, mobile and decentralized and
suitable for location in villages along side existing banana
packing sheds. It also promises to give a significant boost to
local village economies. The capital and operating costs result
in a cost base only a fraction of the existing industries. It is
currently estimated that each small factory could produce
about $20M of
raw product per year. Using existing
plantations these could eventually supply a significant
proportion of the global paper and packaging needs.
Banana ply can be used to make a huge variety of ecofriendly
products for the paper, packaging and building industries. It
also has a unique natural appearance or can be coated with
other materials like normal paper and packaging.
The natural fibre, which is intact after the non pulping process,
is exceptionally long and has high tensile strength. It can
also be recycled through many more cycles than pulped paper.
These are fundamental measures of paper quality and value.
By leaving the natural lignin intact, the material has a variety
of useful properties including water repellent wet strength. It
is also flame retardant and UV resistant which gives it similar
stability to the ancient Papyrus documents such as the Egyptian
Book of the Dead and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Papyrus Australia Limited listed as a public company on the
ASX in 2005 (Code: PPY) when it raised capital to build its
first commercial production facility. This project is on track
and the company expects to commission this production line
in April 2007. There is already significant interest from the
paper industry and banana interests globally.
The race will then commence in earnest between the sustainable
Papyrus Banana ply technology and the dinosaurs of the
existing pulp/paper industries. For the sake of the planet let
us hope that this race is swift and that this Australian Green
Technology makes history as the biggest breakthrough in
sustainable papermaking since its Papyrus namesake.
Dr. David Wyatt is Chairman of Papyrus Australia Ltd
and the first Chairman of an ASX-listed company to stand
as an endorsed candidate for the Greens (in the 2006
Queensland State election). He is also Adjunct Professor
in Corporate Sustainability at the University of Queens-
land Business School. www.papyrusaustralia.com.au”