But Can They Fly?
Alternative papers get set to take off
by Scott Rollans

Paper is made out of trees.

I happen to know this for a fact, because my three-year-old and I saw an educational segment about it on TV. First, a machine (it looked like a big pair of scissors) snipped the tree trunks. Then they loaded the logs onto huge trucks. At the paper factory they chopped the logs up, turned the chips into mushy stuff called "pulp," and bleached the pulp to make it white. Then, somehow (I'm not really clear on this part), giant rolls of paper came out the other end.

Of course, this wasn't really an in-depth program. It didn't explore the world's spiralling consumption of paper (rising an estimated 4% per year), and the growing pressure that puts on our rivers and forests. The show never got around to mentioning words like "clearcut" and "dioxin."

Then again, I can fill that part in for myself. Every time I glance at my blue box, stuffed with newsprint, my cynical inner voice cries out a lusty, "TIMMM-BERRR!"

There's a growing movement afoot to change all that, however. Within the next couple of decades, much of our paper could come from farmland, rather than timberland. Big business, family farmers, legislators and environmentalists are exploring the possibility of using annual crops to help feed our paper habit.

Of the two main agricultural candidates, one -- a plant called kenaf -- just might be on its way to market credibility. In the American South, 20 newspapers, worried about steady increases in the price of newsprint, have signed long-term agreements to buy paper made from a mixture of kenaf fibre and recycled pulp. This interest could secure investment for America's first kenaf mill, proposed for Texas.

An African member of the hibiscus family, kenaf grows to 12-14 feet, producing two distinct types of fibre. The outer layer, or "bast", produces long fibres perfectly suited for high quality papers. The inner core, made up of short fibres, can be processed into a variety of low-grade paper products, such as poultry litter.

American kenaf proponents eagerly sing the plant's praises to anyone who will listen. William Detwiler, President of D2, a Pennsylvania firm selling 100% kenaf paper, points out that kenaf produces three to five times as much fibre per acre than tree farms, a major pulp source in the South. It can be grown with few pesticides and herbicides, and processed with less energy and chemicals than wood pulp. The resulting paper is acid-free and resists yellowing, resulting in a much longer shelf life.

Detwiler denies that the kenaf industry will threaten forests by creating a demand for additional farmlands. "Kenaf grows well in very marginal soils, on land not suited for much else," he says. According to Detwiler, states such as Delaware already have more than enough land set aside to meet demand.

The timber industry argues that the kenaf supply will never be reliable enough to compete with wood pulp, but Detwiler disagrees. Once the domestic processing industry gets even a tiny foothold, he believes, farmers and investors will multiply: "When they see that it works, they'll belly up to the bar."

Canadian farmers will have to find a different bar to belly up to. Kenaf requires a long growing season, a luxury we don't have. Fortunately, there's a second, hardier fibre crop generating excitement these days. You might even have heard of it. It's called cannabis.

Thanks to the recreational potential stored within its flowers, cannabis -- or hemp -- fell into disrepute in the early decades of this century. For thousands of years before that, however, it was one of the world's most important crops, providing paper (the Guttenberg Bible was printed on hemp), rope and textiles -- in fact the very word "canvas" derives from "cannabis." It was also a major food source, both for humans and livestock.

Traditional hemp harvesting involves "retting" -- cutting the stalks and leaving them lying on the ground to partially decompose, before manually extracting the fibres. Because of the high labour costs involved, hemp production began to decline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially when new technologies such as the cotton gin made other fibres more competitive.

Then Canada, following the lead of the United States, outlawed production in 1938 under the Opium and Narcotics Control Act. The crop enjoyed a brief renaissance during World War II, when the Canadian and U.S. governments lifted restrictions in order to replace the Phillipine hemp supply, which had been cut off by the Japanese.

Since then, however, hemp has been tightly regulated by the Ministry of Health. Industrial hemp, which is visually indistinguishable from its psychoactive cousin, has been all but outlawed, despite the fact it contains only a negligible amount of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), marijuana's active ingredient. Even if it's allowed to flower (and industrial hemp is normally harvested before flowering), smoking this cannabis won't get you anything but a sore throat.

In 1994 the Ministry, responding to renewed interest in hemp, issued one growing permit to Hempline, a company in the heart of Ontario tobacco country. More permits followed last summer, including two to growers in Alberta.

As a result, national and provincial agriculture ministries are beginning to take a closer look at hemp. In its study, Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development concludes, "In an age increasingly interested in sustainable agriculture and crop diversification, hemp offers some attractive possibilities. It is exceptionally disease- and herbivore-resistant, can be easily grown in a wide range of agricultural systems and is an excellent rotation crop which eliminates weeds. It is extraordinarily productive of biomass, and has been shown to have excellent potential for textile and cordage, paper, building materials, cellulose plastics and resins as well as using the seed for food and oil."

Stan Blade, at the Department's New Crop Development Unit sees both possibilities and pitfalls for the crop: "It does grow very well here. I think if we would put a little effort into doing further agronomic work on it we could probably even improve that production."

He sees the messianic predictions of some hemp proponents, however, as little more than a pipe dream. "In addition to the regulatory problems, I have difficulty with the marketing end of it," he says. "We know that textile hemp is coming in from China at rates we will never be able to compete with. And, at least for the forseeable future, for good or for bad, we have other sources of pulp fibre that are very price competitive -- speaking specifically of the forestry industry." Hemp's best bet, Blade feels, may lie in smaller, more localized pockets of production. "If you could have small plants in rural communities processing these fibres, it could be quite a boon."

In the meantime hemp's quasi-illicit nature poses some unique obstacles. Farmers often don't get approval -- and seeds -- until weeks after the optimum planting dates. "We've always been hanging on a wire over who would get a license and who wouldn't, and it seems that Health Canada is not very interested in making the process easier -- which I respect, because they have a piece of legislation which they need to enforce."

Data on the economic viability of hemp may soon be more readily available, thanks to moves south of the border. Vermont, despite intense lobbying by the national Drug Enforcement Agency, recently passed a law legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp. If the industry shows signs of taking off, it's a safe bet other states -- and Canada -- will quickly follow.

The clothing and textile business is already starting to take notice. According to the New York Times, hemp has eight times the tensile strength and four times the durability of cotton. Clavin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Nike and Converse have all introduced hemp into their lines. Even Disney has given its seal of respectability -- a hemp Indiana Jones hat.

The image of hemp paper, however, has further to go, although, like kenaf paper, it lasts longer and is easier to recycle than paper made from wood pulp. The first widely available paper, from China contained high quantities of straw, and tended to clog and abrade printers and photocopiers.

These problems simply don't exist with most hemp paper, according to Eric Steenstra, co-founder of Virginia's Ecolution. "In fact," he says, "hemp fibres are used in some of the finest, most demanding papers in the world including currencies, cigarettes and bibles." One area in which it doesn't currently perform well, however is price -- Ecolution currently buys its hemp in the Ukraine, pulps it in Czechoslovakia, and makes paper in Hungary before importing it to the U.S. Understandably, Steenstra looks forward to the prospect of a growing domestic industry.

In the meantime, only a giddy optimist would forecast the imminent demise of the wood pulp industry. However, when my daughter's daughter asks, "Where does paper come from, grandpa?" my answer might not be quite so simple.

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