Introducing a New Era in Paper Production and Forest Conservation?

At long last – it’s public. Today Canadian Geographic magazine hit newsstands on the Wheat Sheet. We've been working on this project for a number of years - which speaks to the challenges and opportunities that are inherent to making the seemingly impossible happen sometimes.

Taking the stress off our forests to provide the fibre for paper means finding other environmental alternatives. The Wheat Sheet is made with wheat straw waste – a by-product of our grain harvest. It is estimated that 15-21 million tonnes of cereal straw are left unused after the grain harvest (accounting for tilling back into the soil and other uses such as animal bedding). At commercial production, this could save 100 million trees from being logged every year (equivalent to the number of trees logged to make newsprint in Canada).

Though the Wheat Sheet is a one off for now...we plan on using this momentum to generate infrastructure investment in commercial scale production of straw pulps.

Here is the link to the piece that ran on the National program last night - http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/21/magazine-wheat.html and the stories that are in today’s Globe and Mail and Le Devoir newspapers - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080522.wwheat22/BNStory/Entertainment/ and http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080522.wwheat22/BNStory/Entertainment/

Keep an eye out for a piece on Canada AM tomorrow. Thanks for your patience and indulgence as we've played in the lead up to this campaign announcement and thanks to all of the publishers and printers who have built agricultural residue language into your policies.