Do you have a printer at home (whether laser or inkjet)? Or are you responsible for providing paper for the seemingly insatiable appetite of your departmental printer at the office? Maybe you print on both sides of each sheet by default and encourage usage of paper printed on one side as scrap? Chances are you’d still like to do more to help reduce the number of trees being cut down for paper.
Minto Roy, who lives in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada co-founded Social Print Paper in 2011 to do just this. Social Print Paper uses sugar cane to make printing and copy paper which is sold under the name ‘Sugar Sheet’. Roy says that the paper is “indiscernible from tree fibre paper … It looks the same, feels the same, performs the same.”
The paper is made from the byproduct created when sugar, juices or alchohol are made from sugar cane. And sugar cane crops can be harvested serveral times a year as compared to the decades it takes for a tree to reach maturity.
“Major retailers and consumers seem to agree. Social Print Paper currently sells more than 350 million “sugar sheets” across Canada per year, with goals of expanding to the United States and increasing that number over the next two years.”
If you are in Canada the paper is already likely on a shelf of a store near you and if you’re elsewhere look to see if other tree-free paper is available.