15 ms·

A Startup Making Paper Out of Stone, Not Trees

276 points by T-A 9y ago

soupbowl 9y ago
Just a note: paper is either made of dead standing trees or wood that is so full of rot/defect that no lumber can be made from it. It is a common misconception that live green trees and whole forests are destroyed for paper. - a former woodsman for 13 years Edit: My experience is in western Canada. I forgot that hackernews is a global site. Some countries do grow pine specifically for paper.
- slap_shot 9y ago
  This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what % of people know this.
  - tmnvix 9y ago
    It's not true. It's based on one person's observation (in this case a Canadian woodsman). Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia. That is my personal observation, but it is enough to disprove the claim that paper is only made from dead or rotting trees.
    - daemin 9y ago
      My dad worked at a paper mill in Australia, and all around were plantation pine forests. The plant was making all sorts of household paper goods - paper towels and toilet paper. I don't think it made actual writing paper though.
    - bostik 9y ago
      > Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia. Same for Brazil and Uruguay - they go for certain kinds of eucalyptus trees. How do I know, not having visited either country? My wife is a chemical process engineer, and Finland has a large pulp and paper industry. The technology universities feed process and design engineers there. (To a point where some universities' chemistry departments have been neatly coupled with local pulping industry.) Eucalyptus family has some surprisingly fast-growing varieties. Also, according to the industry, their fibre competes in quality and properties with Scandinavian birchwood. This kind of fibre is particularly wanted for high-quality printing paper. It takes 40-50 years for a birch to grow from seedling to a pulpable "product". With plantation eucalyptus, this time frame is compressed to 15-20 years. You can crunch the numbers. The irony in this is that in in order to make space for eucalyptus plantations, the industry had to cut something down first. And due to the time frames involved, they need to constantly make space for new plantations so they can provide a reliable future supply. The thing they cut down? Rain forest. (Among other things. But certainly enough of it to warrant concern.) Final note: you can't grow eucalyptus in Scandinavia. According to Brazilian process engineers, eucalyptus can withstand one or two sub-zero temperature nights a year. Call it two max. Not two hundred.
      - abakker 9y ago
        Good observation. Another note about eucalyptus is that aside from paper or firewood, it doesn't have much use. It can't really be dried without extensive warping or splitting and doesn't have any use as lumber.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Do the waste wood chips from a typical lumber mill go into particle board or might they also go into paper?
  - soupbowl 9y ago
    It depends on the mill and the current economy. The wood chips will not be used for pulp but instead burned to generate power for the mill, made into fire pallets, particle board or other similar product. Based on what makes the most money in the current economy and the products the mill is equipped to make.
  - tmnvix 9y ago
    In Tasmania they are used to make paper.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  Just to add to this, I used to live near a paper mill, and had friends who worked there. More than half of their feedstock was sawdust and waste chips from the local sawmill, and about a quarter was recycled. Very little virgin wood was used, and what was used was not usable for anything else. // That being said, I wish this guy luck. Having different tech available for use in areas where it would be a better way to do things is not a bad idea.
- emondi 9y ago
  Here in south America paper mills work with massive pine plantations, in deforested land or in former wetlands.
  - richdougherty 9y ago
    Same in New Zealand.
  - soupbowl 9y ago
    I am from western Canada, I guess it is not the same every where.
  - mc32 9y ago
    I know someone who used to work for a paper forrester --the trees they plant are exclusively grown in managed timberlands for conversion to paper --no other use. They use fast growing varieties of trees[1]. The likes of Wayerhaeuser and others. [1]https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-fast-growing-trees-for-paper-production-grow https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-fast-growing-trees-for-pap...
  - EGreg 9y ago
    But they grow the pines for paper and then regrow them? Is the whole operation sustainable? According to Penn and Teller's "Bullshit", it is.
    - emondi 9y ago
      Yes, they use mostly young pines which are easily chipped. I think in about 6 years you can cut them for paper.
      - zebrafish 9y ago
        8-10 years. Most (~80%) of the power needed in a paper mill is generated from the bark of the tree which is converted into fuel using several chemical mixtures. Overall, the paper industry is actually very sustainable.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I thought they mainly used fast-growing pine plantations planted specifically to harvest for paper. (Which still isn't 100% ideal, because monocultured pine isn't friendly to the local species and they're generally devoid of animal life, but way better than clearcutting wild forest.)
  - soupbowl 9y ago
    It is possible that some where in the world people do that. Lumber is worth far more money than paper, especially in our current economy. Growing trees for paper in a forest rich area like western Canada is more effort than it's worth and more expensive.
- mrcsparker 9y ago
  Please write about being a woodsman somewhere and submit it. I would love to read about it
  - soupbowl 9y ago
    I am a terrible writer but I have still considered it many times. I've seen a lot of incredible things being out in nature all the time. Also there are many misconceptions about logging that I like to clear up. But my stories are usually better at a party with a glass of wine!
    - da02 9y ago
      Can you share just one incredible thing with people here who never worked out in nature? I'm very curious.
      - soupbowl 9y ago
        I was working nightshift in an area with a lot of timber wolves. For three nights after sunset one wolf would sit just in the range of my lights and watch me. Dayshift would see the rest of the wolf packs tracks behind my machine each morning. Each night when I would drive home that single wolf would lead me out of the work site by walking ahead of my truck (The roads are rough, you have to drive slow). The most interesting thing that I noticed was: (besides how surprisingly large a timberwolf is) the wolf always walked in the shallowest snow. It is hard to explain why it was interesting, the wolf just seemed very aware and thought out in the way it moved. I have also spent time with Lynx at a close proximity, both times they purred and acted like a house cat. Before hissing and slowly walking away.
        edem 9y ago
        I would LOVE to read your stories. I am working on a simulation based game and stories like these are a great inspiration.
        9y ago
- douche 9y ago
  Yup, the shit wood gets put into pulp, the good stuff gets sawn out for lumber or veneer logs. Hardwood pulp is just barely worth more than the stumpage fees that the loggers must pay to the landowners. Depending on the market, softwood pulp can be even less profitable.
- kevinalexbrown 9y ago
  I'm more curious about the byproducts and energy consumption of each manufacturing process. I have no idea, does anyone have a good comparison? Aside: supposedly global pulp production is 34 percent recycling, 45 percent from sawmill waste, and 21 percent 'logs and chips.'[0] The wikipedia article later states, from another source, that 16 percent of production comes from tree farms. The gist of your general point stands, as I understand it: we're not going out and cutting old growth or even secondary growth forests for paper (though we make use of reject trees when we target them for other reasons). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_(paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_(paper)
  - atupis 9y ago
    This http://bioproductmill.com/bioproducts http://bioproductmill.com/bioproducts is probably at the moment most advanced pulp mill in the world and it produces 1,800 GWh per year.
  - zebrafish 9y ago
    A large majority of the energy used in paper mills comes from the bark of the trees. Logs have to be debarked before they can be pulped and the bark eventually becomes fuel that supplies power to much of the mill.
  - troyvit 9y ago
    What do we clear out to make room for the tree farms and what is their long term effect on the environment? http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/general/1/msg00074.html http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/general/1/msg00074... http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-tree-plantations-are-problem-not-solution http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-tree-plantations-... (not to say a limestone quarry is a better solution...)
- tomcam 9y ago
  Very much not true here in the USA. We have hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of acres set aside specifically for paper. It has been sustainable for well over 100 years and is super well planned, mostly by private companies.
  - kepano 9y ago
    Was going to say the same thing. I recently worked on a piece that walks through the history of managed forests: http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests
  - whistlerbrk 9y ago
    The tree production may be sustainable, but if this article holds true, 100 tons of water for a single ton of paper can't be good for the environment.
    - novia 9y ago
      Not to mention all the chemicals dumped in the air during production! I'm not sure if the stone paper will create less air pollution, but it bothers me when people think creating paper is an environmentally neutral process just because we have the first step of the process figured out.
    - juskrey 9y ago
      Ahem.. but what can happen to water? Apparently it is not destroyed
      - dpark 9y ago
        Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.
        Cerium 9y ago
        I'm not sure that is entirely correct. I live in San Jose, CA and we have groundwater recharge ponds. Throughout the city the water company has plots of land that they keep entirely covered with water. The idea is it soaks in, and then other people pump it back up. http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx
- doikor 9y ago
  Can confirm from selling some wood from inheritance lands to pay the inheritance tax. Basically the good trees get sold for lumber and the ones not good enough become cellulose/paper (with the big machines you always do a full clearing as its more economical this way so you don't get to leave the small ones to grow etc.). This is from Finland. And as others have pointed out most of the raw material going into the local paper mill was saw dust from the local sawmills.
  - Maakuth 9y ago
    This is not completely accurate either, you don't necessarily do full clearing even with the big machines. Typically there's couple of thinnings in the growth cycle from sapling stage to old forest, the whole cycle taking something like 70 years. Mostly you do full clearing at the end and then replant. This is my experience, also from Finland.
- walkingolof 9y ago
  This is not true, most of the material for pulp comes from forest thinning, recycled paper and leftovers from sawmills, at least if you talking industrial scale.
- amelius 9y ago
  It's not just wood. From the article: > To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water, TBM says, while its Limex paper is made without water.
  - distances 9y ago
    This may or may not be a problem. Areas like Canada or Northern Europe have excessive amounts of water, and water preservation does not make sense. In some places domestic water usage is even encouraged to make sure the flow in fresh water tunnels stays brisk enough.
    - jo909 9y ago
      As far as I have understood it, this is mostly a result of overbuild infrastructure. They planned the capacity of some central pipes and sewers in a time where modern water saving technology wasn't yet used as much or even invented, because such projects are supposed to last a few decades. They build for growing usage and population based on the historic growth, but then water saving became a big thing, appliances became much more efficient, and people moved to other parts of the country and the bigger cities etc. So now that infrastructure is underutilized and flow is too low in some parts. But this is managed by the water companies, which know best where and when to increase flow. This is pretty localized, for example when they planned for a future housing development that never came, and just flushing twice won't put a dent in it anyways. Building a papermill in a suburb or countryside is also probably not the most efficient way to solve it.
    - admax88q 9y ago
      There's no such thing as "excessive amounts of water." Just because current demand hasn't exhausted our current water supplies doesn't mean it's not worth conserving. Here in Canada we have the Great Lakes which account for 21% of the worlds fresh water. And they're rapidly becoming polluted. Humanity always finds a way to squander whatever resource you think we have "excessive amounts" of.
  - volundr- 9y ago
    From the article: "In place of 20 trees, it uses less than a ton of limestone, as well as 200 kilograms of polyolefin." 200 kilograms of polyolefin, a class of compounds produced by polymerization of alkenes, which are derived from petrochemicals or ethanol, both of which come from water-intensive sources. Also, is this stuff biodegradable at all? It's basically stone dust infused with an extremely stable plastic. This stuff would last a thousand years in a landfill...
- abandonliberty 9y ago
  People don't realize that we farm trees. It's a crop, like wheat or corn.
- dTal 9y ago
  If only this were true. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/26/sumatra-borneo-deforestation-tigers-palm-oil https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/26/sumatra-borneo... >Official figures show more than half of Indonesia's rainforest, the third-largest swath in the world, has been felled in a few years and permission has been granted to convert up to 70% of what remains into palm or acacia plantations. >Nine villages have been in conflict with the giant paper company April, which has permission to convert, with others, 450,000 hectares of deep peat forests on the Kampar Peninsula in central Sumatra. Because the area contains as much as 1.5bn tonnes of carbon, it has global importance in the fight against climate change.
ipsum2 9y ago
Would this be considered a business, not a startup? I don't see major disruption happening in this space. Lots of companies make non-wood paper, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper and plastic.
- Cyphase 9y ago
  Does a startup have to be majorly disruptive? Does it have to be (one of) the first in its market?
failrate 9y ago
Buried in the article is that the binder is polyolefin, which basically just means plastic. So, this is plastic paper. Granted, the examples given were for semi durable items like menus and business cards, but i still see that as a net negative.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Depending on the type of restaurant menus can need frequent re-printing. I'm sure even at lower-end corporate chains there is a cycle time where new dishes are cycled through while older ones are removed.
  - squimmy 9y ago
    I imagine in those types of restaurants, menus might be cycled-out due to wear and tear more often than due to changing dishes. In which case, the increased durability and water-resistance of this stone-based paper might result in less waste.
- fnl 9y ago
  Polyolefins are used to make stuff like plastic bags and are heavily researched due to their substantial and very negative impact on the environment. So that this stone paper stuff is sold as a more environmentally friendly alternative to paper is just a big hoax. Our oceans are already littered with plastics and aquatic wildlife is heavily impacted. Plastics made out of olefin polymers can survive a whole century - i.e., this "water-free" tech might dump a century worth of plastic paper into our oceans. Nice! :-( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141391010004581 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141391010... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079670010001267 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079670010... asf.... http://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/en/plastic-garbage/problems/effects-on-the-animal-world/ http://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/en/plastic-garbage/prob... http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/how-plastic-is-harming-animals-the-planet-and-us/ http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/how-plastic-is-har... etc....
philipkglass 9y ago
To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water, TBM says, while its Limex paper is made without water. In place of 20 trees, it uses less than a ton of limestone, as well as 200 kilograms of polyolefin. ... "Making paper from wood chips involves planting trees, which can be carbon neutral, so I’m not sure how much appeal this will have" from an environmental perspective. Appeal from an environmental perspective: zero. Less than zero. Polyolefins are plastics. The vast majority are made from fossils. Polyolefins can be made starting from biomass but then so is ordinary paper. It's baffling if the inventor or his customers think that he's improved on the traditional environmental tradeoffs associated with paper production.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  Polyolefins are some of the safest plastics around, environmentally speaking, and are fully recyclable. The paper may actually be as good or better than standard pulp paper is. It may not be, too! Calculating the lifecycle is complex. But it isn't something than is easy to assume one way or the other.
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    I did not say that polyolefins were dangerous. But they are less biodegradable and less renewable than the trees of which paper is normally made. And while polyolefins like empty distilled water jugs are easily recycled, I very much doubt that this blend of limestone and polyolefin can be recycled by the usual curbside collectors.
    - Baeocystin 9y ago
      >But they are less biodegradable and less renewable than the trees of which paper is normally made. This is not the safe bet many people think. If you look at the entire lifecycle of a product, plastic bags (to take an example) have a better footprint across the board than paper ones. http://www.alternet.org/environment/whats-better-environment-paper-bags-or-reusable-plastic-bags http://www.alternet.org/environment/whats-better-environment...
isaac_is_goat 9y ago
Silliness. Paper is a sustainable, and easily renewable resource...we don't need to find alternatives if we just keep planting trees.
- tommoor 9y ago
  From the article: "To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water". It hardly seems silly to avoid that cost, fresh water is on it's way to being a scarce resource in many parts of the planet.
  - trentmb 9y ago
    dumb question: can we splice a gene or two from a mangrove with whatever trees are used for paper products to have salt-water paper trees?
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      I think most of the water usage is not from growing the trees, but in the actual manufacturing process.
  - turbohedgehog 9y ago
    The water doesn't just disappear into thin air. It gets reused sometimes and then get treated and released or reused.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      Side point: water literally just disappears into thin air.
  - true_religion 9y ago
    It's not a scarce resource in the parts of the planet where the paper is produced, and it is not cost effective to transport water to these places in sufficient quantities for it to no longer count as 'scarce'.
johngrefe 9y ago
I wonder what takes more CO2 output. Mining stone, or growing trees and processing them in paper farms? Smrt.
- soupbowl 9y ago
  Processed wood is considered carbon neutral until it breaks down, minus the transportation emissions.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I'm not sure about this. Trees are sustainable and renewable. Rocks are not. This is why mining can be so devastating to an area
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  We're never going to run out of lime. Ever. It is literally everywhere.
  - matthewbauer 9y ago
    We're never going to run out of coal either. Doesn't mean we should use it.
    - Baeocystin 9y ago
      ? Coal has nothing in common with lime. Lime consumes CO2 from the air as it sets. If produced appropriately, it's carbon neutral.
      - grenoire 9y ago
        That's a very light definition of carbon neutral. All the equipment and energy (for humans and machines) to mine anything costs carbon to bring about.
        Baeocystin 9y ago
        It's an important point. There is nothing intrinsic about lime that requires carbon release beyond what is naturally released and consumed by the lime cycle itself, which is neutral. Does the world's industry currently run on mostly hydrocarbons that do have a serious carbon footprint? Absolutely, yes. And it is something that needs to be changed. But that is a separate problem.
  - dragonmum 9y ago
    > We're never going to run out of lime. Ever. It is literally everywhere. Not true. Limestone suitable for mining is a limited resource. That's why cement companies like Lafarge pay millions for mining rights in South East Asia. They clear out entire mountain ranges to turn into cement.
saagarjha 9y ago
Quick question: what are the properties of this paper? Can I burn it? Fold it? Eat it?
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  Yes. Polyolefins are highly flammable. They aren't the worst plastic to burn, but they will melt and stick to things, and you really shouldn't breathe the smoke. Yes. With the right attitude, anything is possible! (really, don't, though.)
desireco42 9y ago
I had one of the most beautiful writing experiences with pencil on stone paper, it is amazing (Field Notes). On the other hand, it is not for fountain pens. I think it is specialty paper that is very useful but will not replace regular paper and also should not be sold as ecological alternative.
nottorp 9y ago
I'm assuming that besides it being waterproof, it's also fireproof? That would make it interesting. Other than that, limestone isn't renewable while trees are so...
- easuter 9y ago
  Given that it one of its key components is plastic, I imagine it be waterproof but will also be quite flammable.
lazyjones 9y ago
I see 2 problems with this: * the other ingredient is polyolefin resins - unless they are obtained from recycled plastic bags or similar, this probably makes Limex worse than normal paper (how much water is involved, we do't know for sure). * what happens at the product's EOL? Will it end up together with recycled paper and cause problems in that process? Will it have to be recycled separately and if yes, who's going to be able to tell these types of paper apart?
oxplot 9y ago
There doesn't seem to be mention of few existing companies that have been producing notebooks and other products from limestone, for years now. One example: * http://nuco-direct.com/nu-stone/ http://nuco-direct.com/nu-stone/
- janekm 9y ago
  Well, the article did say that the owner of the company saw this type of "paper" in Korea and decided to set up a similar factory in Japan...
dguo 9y ago
"He says it’s the answer to concerns over deforestation and water shortages, with world demand for paper set to double by 2030." I'm very curious as to what is expected to be driving this increase in demand. If anything, I would expect electronics to make paper more and more obsolete. But what am I missing?
- froo 9y ago
  Looking at some of the pictures supplied in the article, it looks like they're probably expecting packaging and food service consumption to go up, which you can't digitise.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  If we build enough desalination plants, there'd be no such thing as [fresh] water shortage; 2/3rds of the planet is covered in it. That said... Why aren't Paper pulping factories located near the sea, and have desalination on site if using fresh water is such a problem?
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Paper pulping factories are built where fresh water is abundant, they don't have a problem. These areas also tend to coincide with wood sources. It would be incredibly inefficient to make paper on desalination water when you can just ship it from a rainy place. Whenever someone is making a big topic out of water consumption (not to be confused with water pollution!) without specific ties to an arid environment it's just a desperate attempt at greenwashing. Water scarcity is real, but it is not universally real everywhere.
    - lovemenot 9y ago
      Agreed. But exceptions do exist. Singapore is neither arid nor self-sufficient in fresh water.
      - usrusr 9y ago
        If water is really that scarce there ( = expensive), they are most likely using a much more water-efficient process than the typical pulp factory close to arid wood resources. The rough ballpark numbers for "water use in paper production" include a majority of factories located in places where investment in water reuse facilities simply does not work out economically, and quite possibly not even ecologically.
chefandy 9y ago
I have a notebook made from stone paper. I use it in my kitchen because water won't kill it and I can write on it in sharpie without it bleeding, even onto the opposite side of the page. This is not new.
everyone 9y ago
Isn't hemp one of the most ecologically sound materials to make paper from? random link http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper_files/hempvtree.htm http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper_files/hempvtree.htm And one of the reasons marijuana was originally prohibited in the US was due to lobbying from wood-based paper companies.
- badosu 9y ago
  > And one of the reasons marijuana was originally prohibited in the US was due to lobbying from wood-based paper companies. The lobbying reason I heard of was it's fiber being used for ship ropes.
- dsl 9y ago
  The fact hemp is illegal is silly, but it isn't as amazing as all the potheads would have you believe. Hemp is legal to grow elsewhere in the world, and importing it into the US has been legal since the 90s. Yet the worldwide demand for hemp has stayed flat, mostly because it requires a massive amount of water and humus rich soil compared to alternatives. The plant itself has a weak stalk that makes mechanical harvesting difficult, and can't be harvested year-round like trees can. If it was a commercially viable alternative, you'd see usage in Europe and Asia. Remember that poor countries tend to gravitate to cost efficient materials for domestic use, yet almost all hemp produced is exported.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Quequau 9y ago
  I've read this as well and from a number of sources.
elicash 9y ago
You can view the end result, including when they attempt to tear it, in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchJZKoT16w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchJZKoT16w
tray5 9y ago
I've got a notebook of stone paper that I bought from a local office supplier which I use for general note taking. It's not the brand in the article however. Writing on stone paper feels quite amazing. The pen just glides over the paper, and the paper feels very high quality. It's waterproof and doesn't tear like normal paper (when you pull it apart it pulls like a flimsy elastic plastic that eventually rips). I thoroughly enjoy using it.
Animats 9y ago
Paper is a declining consumer of wood. "Peak paper" was years ago, after print newspapers tanked. There are many abandoned paper mills, if you want one. It's possible to make paper from rice hulls (works fine, and common in China, but a bit hard as a writing surface), kenaf (works, but nobody bothers), and hemp (niche product for potheads). It's just not a problem.
- walkingolof 9y ago
  It shifted rather, newspaper paper is down yes, but hygienic products and all sort of package material is up by allot
  - dx034 9y ago
    Ecommerce will probably play an even bigger role there. The demand for paper packaging has been increasing constantly over the last decade. Amazon probably uses more paper than even a major newspaper.
id122015 9y ago
Going back to Flinstone age ?
bronz 9y ago
why is there no effort to make artificial tree mass? this could be done by creating genetically engineered trees that use as little resources as possible to grow as much wood as possible in lab environments. one could even go as far as powering the cells electrically -- it is theoretically possible and has been done in the lab before. or, why is there no effort to synthesize wood itself chemically, industrially?
- vpribish 9y ago
  are you serious? like - really? because we already do solar powered, mass-industrial-scale, genetically engineered, hyper-optimized paper feedstock production in forests.
  - scarlac 9y ago
    I don't think that's an unreasonable question. Your answer suggests that we already have the most optimal solution, which by analogy cows would be too. I assume you know cows aren't. But like with cows, it is not inconceivable that "regular" trees are not the most effective way of making wood. They need to stay alive which means they "waste" energy doing so. While I personally don't think we can outdo trees with regular chemical compounds, I think we can at least genetically modify some already-optimized tree family in a way that require less water, sun, etc.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Land to grow trees is cheap. Labs to grow trees are not.
jonah 9y ago
There used to be a company called EarthShell which made biodegradable food packaging and other containers out of limestone and other stuff. It went public in 1998[0], filed for bankruptcy protection a decade ago[1], and their twitter account was last updated in 2010[2]. I wish TBM better luck. [0] https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/earthshell-begins-to-crumble https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/earthshell-begins-to-cr... [1] "After losing more than $331 million during its 14 years of operations, EarthShell Corp. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection." - http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2007/01/29/story1.html http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2007/01/29/stor... (paywalled) [2] https://twitter.com/EarthShell https://twitter.com/EarthShell Interesting trivia: the founder and chairman, Essam Khashoggi, is the brother of Adnan Khashoggi - a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair.
tiplus 9y ago
I am worried about the dust this type of paper might produce when it is shredded or ripped, similar to the dust from rockwool insulation materials made from stone fibres. If I remember correctly, the persistence time of rockwool dust (current generation not 1970s) in your lungs is about 4 weeks, during which it is /may be cancerogenic?
dwenzek 9y ago
And this startup aims to replace concrete by a wood based material. https://woodoo.fr/home/ https://woodoo.fr/home/
Inconel 9y ago
Years ago, when I got the original Nexus One smartphone, I'm fairly certain the box it came in contained a small card with instructions on it that was made from limestone. I can't remember the name of the company responsible but I remember it being printed on the card and that I checked out their website since I was intrigued. I never saw those non-paper cards in any subsequent Nexus packages. Edit: I wonder why Google stopped using them. Or maybe they didn't and I just never noticed since they were so paper-like.
hkmurakami 9y ago
This seems way less sustainable than pulp based paper. What's the appeal?
george_ciobanu 9y ago
Trees aside, this is not a new concept, stone paper notebooks have been around for a while. The ones I had wrote incredibly smooth and I loved every one of them. I think Walgreens still carries a small one. https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/oxford-stone-paper-note-book/ID=prod6000650-product https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/oxford-stone-paper-note-bo...
- grondilu 9y ago
  Seems true. A "stone paper" search on Amazon shows there are items already available: https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Paper-Notebook-13x21cm-Cobalt/dp/B06W56LCF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497614854&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=stone+paper&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Paper-Notebook-13x21cm-Cobalt/d...
Nursie 9y ago
Stone.... and polyolefins. This somewhat pollutes the message. Is it anywhere near as recyclable or biodegradable as 'normal' paper?
- saalweachter 9y ago
  From a market perspective, there are really two distinct markets: temporary paper users (newspapers, mailers, the stuff you write your school papers on...) and archival paper users (eg libraries). For archival users, the biodegradability of paper is a bug, not a feature, even though for the bulk of overall paper users are probably the temporary users, and need to be able to compost or recycle your waste paper. Imagine being able to drop your book in the bathtub and just shake it off; imagine future historians finding a thousand year old abandoned library in mint condition. A non-biodegradable paper wouldn't replace wood/rag pulp paper in any meaningful way, but it would have its uses.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
med_abidi 9y ago
I guess this is what it mean to be written in stone.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
MPSimmons 9y ago
Paper sequesters carbon. Why is using stone a good thing here?
bmcusick 9y ago
I wonder what the archival properties of this paper are like. Is it fully inert? That would be useful.
ccvannorman 9y ago
FINALLY, I'll be able to take notes while scuba-diving.
jcwayne 9y ago
> world demand for paper set to double by 2030 We have failed.
iamatworknow 9y ago
I've been using these "Ogami Collection" notebooks apparently made from limestone for a while now: https://origin68.com/collections/notebooks-stationery/products/professional-black-notebook?variant=7229226053 https://origin68.com/collections/notebooks-stationery/produc... They're like much more durable Moleskins, in my experience.
dpark 9y ago
So instead of carbon neutral pulp paper that can be recycled and biodegrades, this paper is 1/5 plastic, doesn't biodegrade, and probably ruins the batch if mixed with pulp-based paper for recycling. The water savings are good, but this doesn't seem like a net gain.
needlessly 9y ago
paper? What is this 1995?
- choward 9y ago
  Computers and the Internet existed back then too. Over two decades later and sending paper through the mail is still a thing. WHY?!?!?!
Chaebixi 9y ago
What's the archival permanence of this stuff?
jaddood 9y ago
I can imagine cutting trees, burning large areas of vegetation to allow for mining, which is even worse. Lands get deformed, parts of limestone mountains start collapsing. Plants never grow again in the area unless aggressive regenaration of the land and planting is done. The soil gets fragile and unstable. I also wonder how the process of production is done. To process limestone usually produces a lot of co2 (I have no reference, but that's what I remember from reading stuff online). Additionally, as many have noted the plastics used (20% of the final mass of the product) still are plastics made from fossil resources. Is a way for recycling known, especially considering the final product is a mixture of plastics and limestone? It seems that the producer does not have a real, scientific proof that his production is environmentally good, but does it as a 'novel', and 'fascinating' idea with the only goal of making money. The article itself says that the producer looks forward to making a product that will last, but does not indicate that the producer ever had a goal of protecting the environment. Finally, the subject is very much worth of discussion in HN, and I personally feel thankful for the one who submitted it.
Someone 9y ago
https://www.wired.com/2013/02/stone-paper-notebook/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/stone-paper-notebook/: "this paper is made from stone, but it isn't exactly eco-friendly". Not surprising given that it is around one fifth plastic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper: "The process for creating Stone Paper was first developed by Taiwan Lung Meng Tech Co. in Taiwan during the late 1990s. Stone Paper has been patented in over 40 countries, where its products are marketed under a variety of other trade names such as GPA UltraGreen, MIST Paper, Parax Paper, Terraskin, ViaStone, Kampier, Limex, CleanSlate, EmanaGreen and Rockstock, Pixz Printing, KYStone Paper and Nu Stone." So, the main idea it isn't new either. What, if anything, is special about this startup's process?
rollingpebbles 9y ago
Just an FYI that Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific papermills release tons of cancer-causing pollutants including PCBs, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform into neighboring communities. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1007148 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1007148 http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/crossett-arkansas-georgia-pacific-factory-pollution-446954.html http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/crossett-arkansas-georgia...
bighi 9y ago
Trees = renewable resource Stone = not renewable resource I don't think we should waste stone even faster than we already are.

276 points by T-A 9y ago

Just a note: paper is either made of dead standing trees or wood that is so full of rot/defect that no lumber can be made from it. It is a common misconception that live green trees and whole forests are destroyed for paper. - a former woodsman for 13 years Edit: My experience is in western Canada. I forgot that hackernews is a global site. Some countries do grow pine specifically for paper.

slap_shot 9y ago
This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what % of people know this.
- tmnvix 9y ago
  It's not true. It's based on one person's observation (in this case a Canadian woodsman). Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia. That is my personal observation, but it is enough to disprove the claim that paper is only made from dead or rotting trees.
  - daemin 9y ago
    My dad worked at a paper mill in Australia, and all around were plantation pine forests. The plant was making all sorts of household paper goods - paper towels and toilet paper. I don't think it made actual writing paper though.
  - bostik 9y ago
    > Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia. Same for Brazil and Uruguay - they go for certain kinds of eucalyptus trees. How do I know, not having visited either country? My wife is a chemical process engineer, and Finland has a large pulp and paper industry. The technology universities feed process and design engineers there. (To a point where some universities' chemistry departments have been neatly coupled with local pulping industry.) Eucalyptus family has some surprisingly fast-growing varieties. Also, according to the industry, their fibre competes in quality and properties with Scandinavian birchwood. This kind of fibre is particularly wanted for high-quality printing paper. It takes 40-50 years for a birch to grow from seedling to a pulpable "product". With plantation eucalyptus, this time frame is compressed to 15-20 years. You can crunch the numbers. The irony in this is that in in order to make space for eucalyptus plantations, the industry had to cut something down first. And due to the time frames involved, they need to constantly make space for new plantations so they can provide a reliable future supply. The thing they cut down? Rain forest. (Among other things. But certainly enough of it to warrant concern.) Final note: you can't grow eucalyptus in Scandinavia. According to Brazilian process engineers, eucalyptus can withstand one or two sub-zero temperature nights a year. Call it two max. Not two hundred.
    - abakker 9y ago
      Good observation. Another note about eucalyptus is that aside from paper or firewood, it doesn't have much use. It can't really be dried without extensive warping or splitting and doesn't have any use as lumber.
linkregister 9y ago
Do the waste wood chips from a typical lumber mill go into particle board or might they also go into paper?
- soupbowl 9y ago
  It depends on the mill and the current economy. The wood chips will not be used for pulp but instead burned to generate power for the mill, made into fire pallets, particle board or other similar product. Based on what makes the most money in the current economy and the products the mill is equipped to make.
- tmnvix 9y ago
  In Tasmania they are used to make paper.
Baeocystin 9y ago
Just to add to this, I used to live near a paper mill, and had friends who worked there. More than half of their feedstock was sawdust and waste chips from the local sawmill, and about a quarter was recycled. Very little virgin wood was used, and what was used was not usable for anything else. // That being said, I wish this guy luck. Having different tech available for use in areas where it would be a better way to do things is not a bad idea.
emondi 9y ago
Here in south America paper mills work with massive pine plantations, in deforested land or in former wetlands.
- richdougherty 9y ago
  Same in New Zealand.
- soupbowl 9y ago
  I am from western Canada, I guess it is not the same every where.
- mc32 9y ago
  I know someone who used to work for a paper forrester --the trees they plant are exclusively grown in managed timberlands for conversion to paper --no other use. They use fast growing varieties of trees[1]. The likes of Wayerhaeuser and others. [1]https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-fast-growing-trees-for-paper-production-grow https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-fast-growing-trees-for-pap...
- EGreg 9y ago
  But they grow the pines for paper and then regrow them? Is the whole operation sustainable? According to Penn and Teller's "Bullshit", it is.
  - emondi 9y ago
    Yes, they use mostly young pines which are easily chipped. I think in about 6 years you can cut them for paper.
    - zebrafish 9y ago
      8-10 years. Most (~80%) of the power needed in a paper mill is generated from the bark of the tree which is converted into fuel using several chemical mixtures. Overall, the paper industry is actually very sustainable.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I thought they mainly used fast-growing pine plantations planted specifically to harvest for paper. (Which still isn't 100% ideal, because monocultured pine isn't friendly to the local species and they're generally devoid of animal life, but way better than clearcutting wild forest.)
- soupbowl 9y ago
  It is possible that some where in the world people do that. Lumber is worth far more money than paper, especially in our current economy. Growing trees for paper in a forest rich area like western Canada is more effort than it's worth and more expensive.
mrcsparker 9y ago
Please write about being a woodsman somewhere and submit it. I would love to read about it
- soupbowl 9y ago
  I am a terrible writer but I have still considered it many times. I've seen a lot of incredible things being out in nature all the time. Also there are many misconceptions about logging that I like to clear up. But my stories are usually better at a party with a glass of wine!
  - da02 9y ago
    Can you share just one incredible thing with people here who never worked out in nature? I'm very curious.
    - soupbowl 9y ago
      I was working nightshift in an area with a lot of timber wolves. For three nights after sunset one wolf would sit just in the range of my lights and watch me. Dayshift would see the rest of the wolf packs tracks behind my machine each morning. Each night when I would drive home that single wolf would lead me out of the work site by walking ahead of my truck (The roads are rough, you have to drive slow). The most interesting thing that I noticed was: (besides how surprisingly large a timberwolf is) the wolf always walked in the shallowest snow. It is hard to explain why it was interesting, the wolf just seemed very aware and thought out in the way it moved. I have also spent time with Lynx at a close proximity, both times they purred and acted like a house cat. Before hissing and slowly walking away.
      - edem 9y ago
        I would LOVE to read your stories. I am working on a simulation based game and stories like these are a great inspiration.
        9y ago
douche 9y ago
Yup, the shit wood gets put into pulp, the good stuff gets sawn out for lumber or veneer logs. Hardwood pulp is just barely worth more than the stumpage fees that the loggers must pay to the landowners. Depending on the market, softwood pulp can be even less profitable.
kevinalexbrown 9y ago
I'm more curious about the byproducts and energy consumption of each manufacturing process. I have no idea, does anyone have a good comparison? Aside: supposedly global pulp production is 34 percent recycling, 45 percent from sawmill waste, and 21 percent 'logs and chips.'[0] The wikipedia article later states, from another source, that 16 percent of production comes from tree farms. The gist of your general point stands, as I understand it: we're not going out and cutting old growth or even secondary growth forests for paper (though we make use of reject trees when we target them for other reasons). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_(paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_(paper)
- atupis 9y ago
  This http://bioproductmill.com/bioproducts http://bioproductmill.com/bioproducts is probably at the moment most advanced pulp mill in the world and it produces 1,800 GWh per year.
- zebrafish 9y ago
  A large majority of the energy used in paper mills comes from the bark of the trees. Logs have to be debarked before they can be pulped and the bark eventually becomes fuel that supplies power to much of the mill.
- troyvit 9y ago
  What do we clear out to make room for the tree farms and what is their long term effect on the environment? http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/general/1/msg00074.html http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/general/1/msg00074... http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-tree-plantations-are-problem-not-solution http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-tree-plantations-... (not to say a limestone quarry is a better solution...)
tomcam 9y ago
Very much not true here in the USA. We have hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of acres set aside specifically for paper. It has been sustainable for well over 100 years and is super well planned, mostly by private companies.
- kepano 9y ago
  Was going to say the same thing. I recently worked on a piece that walks through the history of managed forests: http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests
- whistlerbrk 9y ago
  The tree production may be sustainable, but if this article holds true, 100 tons of water for a single ton of paper can't be good for the environment.
  - novia 9y ago
    Not to mention all the chemicals dumped in the air during production! I'm not sure if the stone paper will create less air pollution, but it bothers me when people think creating paper is an environmentally neutral process just because we have the first step of the process figured out.
  - juskrey 9y ago
    Ahem.. but what can happen to water? Apparently it is not destroyed
    - dpark 9y ago
      Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.
      - Cerium 9y ago
        I'm not sure that is entirely correct. I live in San Jose, CA and we have groundwater recharge ponds. Throughout the city the water company has plots of land that they keep entirely covered with water. The idea is it soaks in, and then other people pump it back up. http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx
doikor 9y ago
Can confirm from selling some wood from inheritance lands to pay the inheritance tax. Basically the good trees get sold for lumber and the ones not good enough become cellulose/paper (with the big machines you always do a full clearing as its more economical this way so you don't get to leave the small ones to grow etc.). This is from Finland. And as others have pointed out most of the raw material going into the local paper mill was saw dust from the local sawmills.
- Maakuth 9y ago
  This is not completely accurate either, you don't necessarily do full clearing even with the big machines. Typically there's couple of thinnings in the growth cycle from sapling stage to old forest, the whole cycle taking something like 70 years. Mostly you do full clearing at the end and then replant. This is my experience, also from Finland.
walkingolof 9y ago
This is not true, most of the material for pulp comes from forest thinning, recycled paper and leftovers from sawmills, at least if you talking industrial scale.
amelius 9y ago
It's not just wood. From the article: > To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water, TBM says, while its Limex paper is made without water.
- distances 9y ago
  This may or may not be a problem. Areas like Canada or Northern Europe have excessive amounts of water, and water preservation does not make sense. In some places domestic water usage is even encouraged to make sure the flow in fresh water tunnels stays brisk enough.
  - jo909 9y ago
    As far as I have understood it, this is mostly a result of overbuild infrastructure. They planned the capacity of some central pipes and sewers in a time where modern water saving technology wasn't yet used as much or even invented, because such projects are supposed to last a few decades. They build for growing usage and population based on the historic growth, but then water saving became a big thing, appliances became much more efficient, and people moved to other parts of the country and the bigger cities etc. So now that infrastructure is underutilized and flow is too low in some parts. But this is managed by the water companies, which know best where and when to increase flow. This is pretty localized, for example when they planned for a future housing development that never came, and just flushing twice won't put a dent in it anyways. Building a papermill in a suburb or countryside is also probably not the most efficient way to solve it.
  - admax88q 9y ago
    There's no such thing as "excessive amounts of water." Just because current demand hasn't exhausted our current water supplies doesn't mean it's not worth conserving. Here in Canada we have the Great Lakes which account for 21% of the worlds fresh water. And they're rapidly becoming polluted. Humanity always finds a way to squander whatever resource you think we have "excessive amounts" of.
- volundr- 9y ago
  From the article: "In place of 20 trees, it uses less than a ton of limestone, as well as 200 kilograms of polyolefin." 200 kilograms of polyolefin, a class of compounds produced by polymerization of alkenes, which are derived from petrochemicals or ethanol, both of which come from water-intensive sources. Also, is this stuff biodegradable at all? It's basically stone dust infused with an extremely stable plastic. This stuff would last a thousand years in a landfill...
abandonliberty 9y ago
People don't realize that we farm trees. It's a crop, like wheat or corn.
dTal 9y ago
If only this were true. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/26/sumatra-borneo-deforestation-tigers-palm-oil https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/26/sumatra-borneo... >Official figures show more than half of Indonesia's rainforest, the third-largest swath in the world, has been felled in a few years and permission has been granted to convert up to 70% of what remains into palm or acacia plantations. >Nine villages have been in conflict with the giant paper company April, which has permission to convert, with others, 450,000 hectares of deep peat forests on the Kampar Peninsula in central Sumatra. Because the area contains as much as 1.5bn tonnes of carbon, it has global importance in the fight against climate change.

ipsum2 9y ago

Would this be considered a business, not a startup? I don't see major disruption happening in this space. Lots of companies make non-wood paper, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper and plastic.

Cyphase 9y ago
Does a startup have to be majorly disruptive? Does it have to be (one of) the first in its market?

failrate 9y ago

Buried in the article is that the binder is polyolefin, which basically just means plastic. So, this is plastic paper. Granted, the examples given were for semi durable items like menus and business cards, but i still see that as a net negative.

wavefunction 9y ago
Depending on the type of restaurant menus can need frequent re-printing. I'm sure even at lower-end corporate chains there is a cycle time where new dishes are cycled through while older ones are removed.
- squimmy 9y ago
  I imagine in those types of restaurants, menus might be cycled-out due to wear and tear more often than due to changing dishes. In which case, the increased durability and water-resistance of this stone-based paper might result in less waste.
fnl 9y ago
Polyolefins are used to make stuff like plastic bags and are heavily researched due to their substantial and very negative impact on the environment. So that this stone paper stuff is sold as a more environmentally friendly alternative to paper is just a big hoax. Our oceans are already littered with plastics and aquatic wildlife is heavily impacted. Plastics made out of olefin polymers can survive a whole century - i.e., this "water-free" tech might dump a century worth of plastic paper into our oceans. Nice! :-( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141391010004581 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141391010... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079670010001267 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079670010... asf.... http://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/en/plastic-garbage/problems/effects-on-the-animal-world/ http://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/en/plastic-garbage/prob... http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/how-plastic-is-harming-animals-the-planet-and-us/ http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/how-plastic-is-har... etc....

philipkglass 9y ago

To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water, TBM says, while its Limex paper is made without water. In place of 20 trees, it uses less than a ton of limestone, as well as 200 kilograms of polyolefin. ... "Making paper from wood chips involves planting trees, which can be carbon neutral, so I’m not sure how much appeal this will have" from an environmental perspective. Appeal from an environmental perspective: zero. Less than zero. Polyolefins are plastics. The vast majority are made from fossils. Polyolefins can be made starting from biomass but then so is ordinary paper. It's baffling if the inventor or his customers think that he's improved on the traditional environmental tradeoffs associated with paper production.

Baeocystin 9y ago
Polyolefins are some of the safest plastics around, environmentally speaking, and are fully recyclable. The paper may actually be as good or better than standard pulp paper is. It may not be, too! Calculating the lifecycle is complex. But it isn't something than is easy to assume one way or the other.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  I did not say that polyolefins were dangerous. But they are less biodegradable and less renewable than the trees of which paper is normally made. And while polyolefins like empty distilled water jugs are easily recycled, I very much doubt that this blend of limestone and polyolefin can be recycled by the usual curbside collectors.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    >But they are less biodegradable and less renewable than the trees of which paper is normally made. This is not the safe bet many people think. If you look at the entire lifecycle of a product, plastic bags (to take an example) have a better footprint across the board than paper ones. http://www.alternet.org/environment/whats-better-environment-paper-bags-or-reusable-plastic-bags http://www.alternet.org/environment/whats-better-environment...

isaac_is_goat 9y ago

Silliness. Paper is a sustainable, and easily renewable resource...we don't need to find alternatives if we just keep planting trees.

tommoor 9y ago
From the article: "To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water". It hardly seems silly to avoid that cost, fresh water is on it's way to being a scarce resource in many parts of the planet.
- trentmb 9y ago
  dumb question: can we splice a gene or two from a mangrove with whatever trees are used for paper products to have salt-water paper trees?
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    I think most of the water usage is not from growing the trees, but in the actual manufacturing process.
- turbohedgehog 9y ago
  The water doesn't just disappear into thin air. It gets reused sometimes and then get treated and released or reused.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    Side point: water literally just disappears into thin air.
- true_religion 9y ago
  It's not a scarce resource in the parts of the planet where the paper is produced, and it is not cost effective to transport water to these places in sufficient quantities for it to no longer count as 'scarce'.

johngrefe 9y ago

I wonder what takes more CO2 output. Mining stone, or growing trees and processing them in paper farms? Smrt.

soupbowl 9y ago
Processed wood is considered carbon neutral until it breaks down, minus the transportation emissions.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

I'm not sure about this. Trees are sustainable and renewable. Rocks are not. This is why mining can be so devastating to an area

Baeocystin 9y ago
We're never going to run out of lime. Ever. It is literally everywhere.
- matthewbauer 9y ago
  We're never going to run out of coal either. Doesn't mean we should use it.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    ? Coal has nothing in common with lime. Lime consumes CO2 from the air as it sets. If produced appropriately, it's carbon neutral.
    - grenoire 9y ago
      That's a very light definition of carbon neutral. All the equipment and energy (for humans and machines) to mine anything costs carbon to bring about.
      - Baeocystin 9y ago
        It's an important point. There is nothing intrinsic about lime that requires carbon release beyond what is naturally released and consumed by the lime cycle itself, which is neutral. Does the world's industry currently run on mostly hydrocarbons that do have a serious carbon footprint? Absolutely, yes. And it is something that needs to be changed. But that is a separate problem.
- dragonmum 9y ago
  > We're never going to run out of lime. Ever. It is literally everywhere. Not true. Limestone suitable for mining is a limited resource. That's why cement companies like Lafarge pay millions for mining rights in South East Asia. They clear out entire mountain ranges to turn into cement.

saagarjha 9y ago

Quick question: what are the properties of this paper? Can I burn it? Fold it? Eat it?

Baeocystin 9y ago
Yes. Polyolefins are highly flammable. They aren't the worst plastic to burn, but they will melt and stick to things, and you really shouldn't breathe the smoke. Yes. With the right attitude, anything is possible! (really, don't, though.)

desireco42 9y ago

I had one of the most beautiful writing experiences with pencil on stone paper, it is amazing (Field Notes). On the other hand, it is not for fountain pens. I think it is specialty paper that is very useful but will not replace regular paper and also should not be sold as ecological alternative.

nottorp 9y ago

I'm assuming that besides it being waterproof, it's also fireproof? That would make it interesting. Other than that, limestone isn't renewable while trees are so...

easuter 9y ago
Given that it one of its key components is plastic, I imagine it be waterproof but will also be quite flammable.

lazyjones 9y ago

I see 2 problems with this: * the other ingredient is polyolefin resins - unless they are obtained from recycled plastic bags or similar, this probably makes Limex worse than normal paper (how much water is involved, we do't know for sure). * what happens at the product's EOL? Will it end up together with recycled paper and cause problems in that process? Will it have to be recycled separately and if yes, who's going to be able to tell these types of paper apart?

oxplot 9y ago

There doesn't seem to be mention of few existing companies that have been producing notebooks and other products from limestone, for years now. One example: * http://nuco-direct.com/nu-stone/ http://nuco-direct.com/nu-stone/

janekm 9y ago
Well, the article did say that the owner of the company saw this type of "paper" in Korea and decided to set up a similar factory in Japan...

dguo 9y ago

"He says it’s the answer to concerns over deforestation and water shortages, with world demand for paper set to double by 2030." I'm very curious as to what is expected to be driving this increase in demand. If anything, I would expect electronics to make paper more and more obsolete. But what am I missing?

froo 9y ago
Looking at some of the pictures supplied in the article, it looks like they're probably expecting packaging and food service consumption to go up, which you can't digitise.
Jaruzel 9y ago
If we build enough desalination plants, there'd be no such thing as [fresh] water shortage; 2/3rds of the planet is covered in it. That said... Why aren't Paper pulping factories located near the sea, and have desalination on site if using fresh water is such a problem?
- usrusr 9y ago
  Paper pulping factories are built where fresh water is abundant, they don't have a problem. These areas also tend to coincide with wood sources. It would be incredibly inefficient to make paper on desalination water when you can just ship it from a rainy place. Whenever someone is making a big topic out of water consumption (not to be confused with water pollution!) without specific ties to an arid environment it's just a desperate attempt at greenwashing. Water scarcity is real, but it is not universally real everywhere.
  - lovemenot 9y ago
    Agreed. But exceptions do exist. Singapore is neither arid nor self-sufficient in fresh water.
    - usrusr 9y ago
      If water is really that scarce there ( = expensive), they are most likely using a much more water-efficient process than the typical pulp factory close to arid wood resources. The rough ballpark numbers for "water use in paper production" include a majority of factories located in places where investment in water reuse facilities simply does not work out economically, and quite possibly not even ecologically.

chefandy 9y ago

I have a notebook made from stone paper. I use it in my kitchen because water won't kill it and I can write on it in sharpie without it bleeding, even onto the opposite side of the page. This is not new.

everyone 9y ago

Isn't hemp one of the most ecologically sound materials to make paper from? random link http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper_files/hempvtree.htm http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper_files/hempvtree.htm And one of the reasons marijuana was originally prohibited in the US was due to lobbying from wood-based paper companies.

badosu 9y ago
> And one of the reasons marijuana was originally prohibited in the US was due to lobbying from wood-based paper companies. The lobbying reason I heard of was it's fiber being used for ship ropes.
dsl 9y ago
The fact hemp is illegal is silly, but it isn't as amazing as all the potheads would have you believe. Hemp is legal to grow elsewhere in the world, and importing it into the US has been legal since the 90s. Yet the worldwide demand for hemp has stayed flat, mostly because it requires a massive amount of water and humus rich soil compared to alternatives. The plant itself has a weak stalk that makes mechanical harvesting difficult, and can't be harvested year-round like trees can. If it was a commercially viable alternative, you'd see usage in Europe and Asia. Remember that poor countries tend to gravitate to cost efficient materials for domestic use, yet almost all hemp produced is exported.
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Quequau 9y ago
I've read this as well and from a number of sources.

elicash 9y ago

You can view the end result, including when they attempt to tear it, in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchJZKoT16w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchJZKoT16w

tray5 9y ago

I've got a notebook of stone paper that I bought from a local office supplier which I use for general note taking. It's not the brand in the article however. Writing on stone paper feels quite amazing. The pen just glides over the paper, and the paper feels very high quality. It's waterproof and doesn't tear like normal paper (when you pull it apart it pulls like a flimsy elastic plastic that eventually rips). I thoroughly enjoy using it.

Animats 9y ago

Paper is a declining consumer of wood. "Peak paper" was years ago, after print newspapers tanked. There are many abandoned paper mills, if you want one. It's possible to make paper from rice hulls (works fine, and common in China, but a bit hard as a writing surface), kenaf (works, but nobody bothers), and hemp (niche product for potheads). It's just not a problem.

walkingolof 9y ago
It shifted rather, newspaper paper is down yes, but hygienic products and all sort of package material is up by allot
- dx034 9y ago
  Ecommerce will probably play an even bigger role there. The demand for paper packaging has been increasing constantly over the last decade. Amazon probably uses more paper than even a major newspaper.

id122015 9y ago

Going back to Flinstone age ?

bronz 9y ago

why is there no effort to make artificial tree mass? this could be done by creating genetically engineered trees that use as little resources as possible to grow as much wood as possible in lab environments. one could even go as far as powering the cells electrically -- it is theoretically possible and has been done in the lab before. or, why is there no effort to synthesize wood itself chemically, industrially?

vpribish 9y ago
are you serious? like - really? because we already do solar powered, mass-industrial-scale, genetically engineered, hyper-optimized paper feedstock production in forests.
- scarlac 9y ago
  I don't think that's an unreasonable question. Your answer suggests that we already have the most optimal solution, which by analogy cows would be too. I assume you know cows aren't. But like with cows, it is not inconceivable that "regular" trees are not the most effective way of making wood. They need to stay alive which means they "waste" energy doing so. While I personally don't think we can outdo trees with regular chemical compounds, I think we can at least genetically modify some already-optimized tree family in a way that require less water, sun, etc.
adrianN 9y ago
Land to grow trees is cheap. Labs to grow trees are not.

jonah 9y ago

There used to be a company called EarthShell which made biodegradable food packaging and other containers out of limestone and other stuff. It went public in 1998[0], filed for bankruptcy protection a decade ago[1], and their twitter account was last updated in 2010[2]. I wish TBM better luck. [0] https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/earthshell-begins-to-crumble https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/earthshell-begins-to-cr... [1] "After losing more than $331 million during its 14 years of operations, EarthShell Corp. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection." - http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2007/01/29/story1.html http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2007/01/29/stor... (paywalled) [2] https://twitter.com/EarthShell https://twitter.com/EarthShell Interesting trivia: the founder and chairman, Essam Khashoggi, is the brother of Adnan Khashoggi - a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair.

tiplus 9y ago

I am worried about the dust this type of paper might produce when it is shredded or ripped, similar to the dust from rockwool insulation materials made from stone fibres. If I remember correctly, the persistence time of rockwool dust (current generation not 1970s) in your lungs is about 4 weeks, during which it is /may be cancerogenic?

dwenzek 9y ago

And this startup aims to replace concrete by a wood based material. https://woodoo.fr/home/ https://woodoo.fr/home/

Inconel 9y ago

Years ago, when I got the original Nexus One smartphone, I'm fairly certain the box it came in contained a small card with instructions on it that was made from limestone. I can't remember the name of the company responsible but I remember it being printed on the card and that I checked out their website since I was intrigued. I never saw those non-paper cards in any subsequent Nexus packages. Edit: I wonder why Google stopped using them. Or maybe they didn't and I just never noticed since they were so paper-like.

hkmurakami 9y ago

This seems way less sustainable than pulp based paper. What's the appeal?

george_ciobanu 9y ago

Trees aside, this is not a new concept, stone paper notebooks have been around for a while. The ones I had wrote incredibly smooth and I loved every one of them. I think Walgreens still carries a small one. https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/oxford-stone-paper-note-book/ID=prod6000650-product https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/oxford-stone-paper-note-bo...

grondilu 9y ago
Seems true. A "stone paper" search on Amazon shows there are items already available: https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Paper-Notebook-13x21cm-Cobalt/dp/B06W56LCF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497614854&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=stone+paper&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Paper-Notebook-13x21cm-Cobalt/d...

Nursie 9y ago

Stone.... and polyolefins. This somewhat pollutes the message. Is it anywhere near as recyclable or biodegradable as 'normal' paper?

saalweachter 9y ago
From a market perspective, there are really two distinct markets: temporary paper users (newspapers, mailers, the stuff you write your school papers on...) and archival paper users (eg libraries). For archival users, the biodegradability of paper is a bug, not a feature, even though for the bulk of overall paper users are probably the temporary users, and need to be able to compost or recycle your waste paper. Imagine being able to drop your book in the bathtub and just shake it off; imagine future historians finding a thousand year old abandoned library in mint condition. A non-biodegradable paper wouldn't replace wood/rag pulp paper in any meaningful way, but it would have its uses.
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med_abidi 9y ago

I guess this is what it mean to be written in stone.

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MPSimmons 9y ago

Paper sequesters carbon. Why is using stone a good thing here?

bmcusick 9y ago

I wonder what the archival properties of this paper are like. Is it fully inert? That would be useful.

ccvannorman 9y ago

FINALLY, I'll be able to take notes while scuba-diving.

jcwayne 9y ago

> world demand for paper set to double by 2030 We have failed.

iamatworknow 9y ago

I've been using these "Ogami Collection" notebooks apparently made from limestone for a while now: https://origin68.com/collections/notebooks-stationery/products/professional-black-notebook?variant=7229226053 https://origin68.com/collections/notebooks-stationery/produc... They're like much more durable Moleskins, in my experience.

dpark 9y ago

So instead of carbon neutral pulp paper that can be recycled and biodegrades, this paper is 1/5 plastic, doesn't biodegrade, and probably ruins the batch if mixed with pulp-based paper for recycling. The water savings are good, but this doesn't seem like a net gain.

needlessly 9y ago

paper? What is this 1995?

choward 9y ago
Computers and the Internet existed back then too. Over two decades later and sending paper through the mail is still a thing. WHY?!?!?!

Chaebixi 9y ago

What's the archival permanence of this stuff?

jaddood 9y ago

I can imagine cutting trees, burning large areas of vegetation to allow for mining, which is even worse. Lands get deformed, parts of limestone mountains start collapsing. Plants never grow again in the area unless aggressive regenaration of the land and planting is done. The soil gets fragile and unstable. I also wonder how the process of production is done. To process limestone usually produces a lot of co2 (I have no reference, but that's what I remember from reading stuff online). Additionally, as many have noted the plastics used (20% of the final mass of the product) still are plastics made from fossil resources. Is a way for recycling known, especially considering the final product is a mixture of plastics and limestone? It seems that the producer does not have a real, scientific proof that his production is environmentally good, but does it as a 'novel', and 'fascinating' idea with the only goal of making money. The article itself says that the producer looks forward to making a product that will last, but does not indicate that the producer ever had a goal of protecting the environment. Finally, the subject is very much worth of discussion in HN, and I personally feel thankful for the one who submitted it.

Someone 9y ago

https://www.wired.com/2013/02/stone-paper-notebook/ https://www.wired.com/2013/02/stone-paper-notebook/: "this paper is made from stone, but it isn't exactly eco-friendly". Not surprising given that it is around one fifth plastic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_paper: "The process for creating Stone Paper was first developed by Taiwan Lung Meng Tech Co. in Taiwan during the late 1990s. Stone Paper has been patented in over 40 countries, where its products are marketed under a variety of other trade names such as GPA UltraGreen, MIST Paper, Parax Paper, Terraskin, ViaStone, Kampier, Limex, CleanSlate, EmanaGreen and Rockstock, Pixz Printing, KYStone Paper and Nu Stone." So, the main idea it isn't new either. What, if anything, is special about this startup's process?

rollingpebbles 9y ago

Just an FYI that Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific papermills release tons of cancer-causing pollutants including PCBs, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform into neighboring communities. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1007148 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1007148 http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/crossett-arkansas-georgia-pacific-factory-pollution-446954.html http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/crossett-arkansas-georgia...

bighi 9y ago

Trees = renewable resource Stone = not renewable resource I don't think we should waste stone even faster than we already are.