Are any paper products made from plants besides trees?

Question

I was curious if any paper products are made from other paper like plants instead of trees because trees take so long to grow.

If so, what are these plants? Are companies looking into substituting plants that are easy to grow instead of sacrificing the trees?

Answer 1

I've seen people turn a fruit's peeled skin (I think it was jackfruit) into paper. It's really thick, though. Well, it's still from trees. Sort of.

Answer 2

Here is a good web site that gives you a host of other ideas for tree-free paper.

http://www.consciouschoice.com/1999/cc12...

Answer 3

In Costa Rica, there is a agricultural college that grow bananas among other crops, and they refine the fiber from the banana stem, (the center piece the bananas are growing from), into paper used for art painting, fine stationary etc.

I Sweden there is a little local moose farm that make paper from moose p**p (droppings). I winter time the Swedish moose feed from young pine plants and but their digestive system cant break down the cellulose fiber. So this farmer have some people go out in the spring picking up some 1000s of pounds of moose dropping for his little industry. He export fine art paper and fine stationary to Japan. BIG BUCKS i think. Have been to both these unique paper places and seen it with my own eyes.

http://www.moosegarden.com/228-16-112.ht...

http://www.moosegarden.com/402-16-112.ht...

http://www.ecopaper.com/

Answer 4

Papyrus..?

Answer 5

Cotton is used in high end paper.  Sometimes this is referred to linen content or rag content.

Recycled paper is another product.

Bamboo and rice paper.

Answer 6

Sure - you can make paper out of any fibrous material.  Cotton makes decent paper, I'm told.  Cloth rags are sometimes used to make high quality paper.

The process is about the same, no matter what you start with.  Add a bit of water, beat your material to a pulpy mess, and pour it over a very fine screen or mesh so that the fibers remain behind and the water drains away.  Let it dry, cut it to size, and you've got paper.  You could try it at home with whatever is at hand - grass, straw, etc.  

The reason that trees are used is that there are a lot of them, the process is optimized to use them, and they can be farmed easily to grow specifically for making paper.  In some areas, the soil doesn't work well for farming, but it will grow a cash crop of trees.

Some companies and people have looked into other plants.  The potheads claim that hemp paper could be a substitute.

Answer 7

Hemp.

bank notes are made of it, stronger than wood paper.

"# An acre of hemp will produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees over a 20 year period.

# The hemp paper-making process requires no dioxin-producing chlorine bleach and uses 75% to 85% less sulphur-based acid.

# Hemp paper is suitable for recycle use 7 to 8 times, compared with 3 times for wood pulp paper. By utilizing hemp pulp for paper, we could reduce deforestation and produce stronger, more environmentally sound paper for less than 3% of the price of wood pulp paper."

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/clothcap/april...