HEMP PAPER

Recycled Paper

Recycled Paper is made from both virgin tree-fibres and recycled fibres with one exception, and that is 100% post-consumer paper which is made from 100% recycled fibres. Therefore, trees are still cut to make most recycled paper.

In general, fibres are separated from the other materials when paper is recycled. The leftover "sludge" contains unwanted toxic residues such as pigments, heavy metals and other ingredients from printing inks and adhesives. It is estimated that 100 tonnes of recycled paper generate 40 tonnes of toxic sludge causing major disposal problems.

Finally, The quality of a recycled paper tends to be less desirable due to shorter fibres and other impurities.

History Of Paper Making

The use of fibre hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) for pulp and paper dates back more than 2,000 years. The oldest surviving piece of paper in the world was discovered by archeologists in 1957 in a tomb near Sian in Shensi province, China (Temple 1986). It is about 10 cm square and can be dated precisely between the years 140 and 87 BC. This paper and similar bits of paper surviving from the next century are thick, coarse, and uneven in their texture. They are all made of pounded and disintegrated hemp fibres. Paper historians agree that the earlier Egyptian papyrus sheets should not be referred to as paper, because the fibre strands are woven and not "wet-laid" (Hunter 1957). The Chinese paper-making craftsmanship was transferred to Arabic and North-African countries, and from there to Europe. The first European paper making was reported in the first half of the 16th century (Hunter 1957).

Until the early 19th century, the only raw material available for paper making was rags. Rags are worn-out clothes. Since at that time clothing was solely made of hemp and flax (sometimes cotton), almost all paper in history was thus made of hemp and flax fibres. With the industrial revolution, the need for paper began to exceed the available rag supply. Although hemp was the most traded commodity in the world up to the 1830s (Conrad 1993), the shortage of rags threatened the monopoly for hemp and flax as paper-making fibres. This was the major incentive for inventors and industries to develop new processes to use the world's most abundant (and cheap) source of natural fibres: our forests.

Currently, only about 5% of the world's paper is made from annual plants like hemp, flax, cotton, sugarcane bagasse, esparto, wheat straw, reeds, sisal, abaca, banana leaf, ananas and some other more exotic species. The world hemp paper pulp production is now believed to be around 120,000 tons per year (FAO 1991), which is about 0.05 % of the world's annual pulp production volume. Hemp pulps are generally blended with other (wood-) pulps for paper production. There is currently no significant production of 100 % true hemp paper.

Renewed Interest In Hemp Paper

The recent renewed interest in hemp as a paper-making fibre seems to originate from a strong environmental motive. All primary forests in Europe, and most in North America have been destroyed, amongst others for paper production. Now we accuse the nations which still have primary forests of not guarding theirs.

In Europe all trees harvested for paper making were intended for that purpose, so there seems to be no valid reason to switch to a non-wood or "tree-free" fibre source. This of course is a little different in the Americas and in Asia and Australia, where primary forests are cleared at a huge environmental cost. In these regions hemp has a number of advantages as an alternative source of paper-making fibre. Hemp does not need pesticides or herbicides, and yields three to four times more usable fibre per hectare per annum than forests. And last but not least: paper recycling was invented to make up for the mistake of cutting down our primary forests. Technically speaking, one doesn't need to recycle hemp paper, because it is a renewable raw material.

One disadvantage of using hemp or other annual plants as fibre source is that the present pulping technology has been optimised for tree-fibre pulping, so some adjustments in the pulping processes need to be made when applying this technology to hemp fibres. Before going into technical details, we will first examine the technology of pulp and paper making.

Hemp Pulp Industry Today - If you Smoke Cigarettes - You Smoke Hemp!

Although there are thousands of non-wood paper mills in the world, only a few of them use hemp as a fibre source. At present 23 paper mills use hemp fibre, at an estimated world production volume of 120,000 tons per annum. Most of the mills are located in China and India, and produce moderate quality printing and writing paper. Typically, these mills do not really have a fixed source of fibre, but they simply use whatever can be found in the region. About 10 of the mills are located in the western world (US, UK, France, Spain, eastern Europe, Turkey), and these mills produce so-called specialty papers such as:

	Cigarette Paper: even popular American cigarette brands have a 50% hemp cigarette paper and filter. Some countries still have legislation prescribing the use of hemp in cigarette paper, because other fibres (like spruce) generate hazardous fumes when incinerated (!).
	* filter paper (for technical and scientific uses)
	* coffee filters, tea bags
	* coffee filters, tea bags

RESOURCES

* Abel E.L. 1980. Marihuana, the first twelve thousand years. Plenum press, New York, 289 pp.

* Conrad C., 1993. Hemp, lifeline to the future. Creative Xpressions Publishing, Los Angeles, California.

* FAO 1991. The outlook for pulp and paper to 1995. Paper products, and industrial update. Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, Rome.

* Hunter, D. 1957. Papermaking, the history and technique of an ancient craft. 2nd Ed. Albert A. Knopf

* Smook G.A. 1982. Handbook for pulp & paper technologists. 2nd Ed. Angus Wilde Publications, Vancouver, B.C.

* Temple R.K.C, 1986. China, land of discovery and invention. Patrick Stevens Ltd., United Kingdom.