Canadian magazine makes history using special paper
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | 9:17 PM ET
CBC News
A Canadian magazine will be making history Thursday — Canadian Geographic is publishing its annual environment issue on paper made from wheat, a first for a North American magazine.
The issue is being printed on sheets made with wheat straw — what's left of wheat after the grain harvest.
The magazine says adding agricultural waste to pulp from trees could offer farmers a new source of revenue and cut the demand for pulp from the continent's boreal forests.
The special issue is the result of a four-year project the magazine's staff has been working on with Markets Initiative, a Canadian environmental group devoted to the protection of the boreal forest, the Alberta Research Council and the magazine's printer, Dollco Printing.
"We are all quite elated," the magazine's editor-in-chief, Rick Boychuk, said. "This has galvanized the whole company. People are thrilled to be at the forefront of an initiative of this nature."
The idea was the brainchild of Nicole Rycroft, a committed environmentalist who works for Markets Initiative.
"Canada's forests are disappearing at an alarming rate and if we just look at newsprint, for example, 100 million trees are logged every year in Canada just to make newsprint," Rycroft said.
The wheat-straw pulp used in the making of the issue was imported from China, where papermakers have been using wheat and rice for centuries.
But Rycroft hopes to sell North America's pulp and paper industry on the idea that magazine-grade paper can be made here from agricultural waste produced by Canadian farmers.
According to Canadian Geographic, Canadian farmers annually produce an estimated 21 million tonnes of wheat straw, which could be turned into eight million tonnes of pulp and enough paper for 20 million magazines.
That straw could be a new source of revenue for farmers willing to bale and sell it to pulp-and-paper companies.
The magazine has been published by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society continuously since 1930.
