By Lynn Moore, THE GAZETTE October 10, 2011

North America’s first straw-paper book is to be published Tuesday, Oct. 11 in an initiative that some hope will see agricultural chaff replace trees as fodder for the publishing industry.

About 500 copies of Margaret Atwood’s new book have been printed on paper made from wheat straw, flax straw and pulp from recycled paper.

“This is an elegant solution to a pressing problem,” Atwood wrote in the foreword of the special edition version of In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination.

“Human beings need oxygen, and forests produce it; printed books require paper, but paper need not be made from virgin forests.”

The fibre used in the McClelland & Stewart special edition is taken exclusively from straw left after harvest or used as animal bedding and the like, according to the Vancouver-based advocacy group Canopy.

The paper, produced by Quebec-based Cascades Inc., has half the ecological footprint of conventional paper, said Nicole Rycroft, Canopy’s executive director.

It is part of a broader Canopy campaign to diversify the North American paper fibre basket to reduce the demands on boreal forests by kick-starting commercial-scale development of straw-based papers.

“There is enough leftover straw in North America to keep up to 800 million trees standing every year, and Canopy has already identified customer demand to keep four pulp mills running full time,” Rycroft said.

“Shifting paper production from our endangered forests to our fields would yield a new resource sector with benefits to farming communities, our economy, and forest ecosystems around the world.”

Although the flax straw used in the paper comes from Alberta, the wheat straw pulp travelled from China because there is no commercial-scale facility in North America with equipment to deal with wheat straw.

It would cost between $50 million and $200 million to upgrade existing pulp facilities to handle wheat straw, Rycroft said.

One option being considered by potential investors involves building a new pulp facility close to Canada’s wheat fields and rail lines, she said. “From a business perspective it makes a lot of sense.”

Agri-fibre makes the “economics of paper production more viable because the raw materials and the production costs are significantly less,” said Rycroft, who has played a central role in the greening of Canada’s publishing industry over the past decade.

And for farmers, “it’s a whole new revenue source,” she said.

But there has to be enough demand to cover capital costs and create economy-of-scale production.

A Canopy market survey identified 800,000 tonnes of demand for agri-fibre paper, which, Rycroft says, could generate up to $920 million for the Canadian economy.

The idea isn’t new. Countries such as India and China have been making paper with straw for centuries.

Closer to home, Cascades has been looking at agricultural residue since the 1990s, said Julie Loyer, sustainable development adviser with the company’s specialty products group.

When Canopy said it wanted to stimulate the marketplace for the product, the company was happy to jump aboard.

The Atwood book has moved the venture “from theoretical possibility to tangible product,” Loyer said.

Cascades has now made agri-fibre “an important business strategy.”

Its fine papers plant in St. Jérôme, which made the batch of straw-laced paper this summer, already produces 100-per-cent post-consumer fibre that is certified as chlorine-free.

Working with Canopy and its other allies in a group effort opens up greener possibilities for Cascades, Loyer said.

It has done some number-crunching around the scenario that would see agri-fibre pulp shipped by rail from Western Canada to St. Jérôme, Loyer said.

“If the price is comparable to what we pay for recycled, then it could be viable,” she said.

Potential customers are already calling, looking for agri-fibre paper, Loyer added.

Atwood’s special edition book offers proof of concept that will spur the work being done by Cascades and others, Rycroft said.

The forest-friendly book will also be used as a sort of tangible talisman.

About 200 copies of the book will be sent to senior decision makers in government, industry and investment houses.

The rest will be sold at $100 a copy as a fundraiser for Canopy, a non-profit venture that says it gets 62 per cent of its funding from foundations.

Atwood is the latest celebrity author to help Canopy – formerly Markets Initiative – push for new forms of eco-paper.

Alice Munro “literally stopped the presses” to ensure her book Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage was printed on forest-friendly paper in a Canopy initiative, Rycroft recalled.

In 2003, Canopy began greening the Harry Potter series with the support of author J.K. Rowling.

The first North American glossy magazine to be printed on paper made with straw was the June edition of Canadian Geographic. It also was a Canopy initiative.

lmoore@montrealgazette.com

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