HSC Office Products - Cane Fields Sugar Cane Paper

Sugarcane waste (Bagasse) is one of the most eco-friendly, sustainable, renewable resources suitable for high quality paper making.

Sugarcane is grown and used extensively around the world. When the sugarcane is mature, the harvest is sent to a sugar mill at which time the sugar is extracted from the fibre. The sugar is then used for human consumption, however, the fibre is wasted and has, in the past, caused further environmental problems due to burn-off of the fibre as a method of disposal (green house gases are created during the burn-off process).

Canefields/TNPL takes the wasted bagasse fibre and uses state of the art technology to create a bagasse pulp suitable for high quality paper making. Whilst our newsprint papers are produced from 100% bagasse fibre, our high quality office and printing papers have a 20% internal Australian eucalypt plantation fibre added to ensure that the paper is suitable for all office and print applications.

As the sugarcane fibre is grown primarily for sugar and the fibre is retrieved (rather than disposed of) our paper products fall under the following categories: Paper produced from a non-forest resource (alternative fibre) Paper sourced from a renewable resource (crops are constantly renewed for sugar consumption) Recyled paper (as per FSC's description of papers which are considered recycled).

Recycled wood paper can only be recycled a limited number of times due to the destruction of the paper fibres during the recycling process. This issue is already clearly apparent in the carton and packaging industries around the world.

The problem does not pose an immediate threat to the recycling process with office paper and stationery as more than 90% of the world's paper is currently derived from virgin wood fibre. However, over the next decade, as the world turns towards environmental paper solutions and forests are no longer as widely available for paper making, the current recycling processes will no longer be able to continue without the substantial addition of virgin fibre into the recyling process.

Unfortunately, whilst environment groups around the world acknowledge the future problems with recyling, they have not yet moved to look at the solutions that will be required in the near future to avoid the quality deterioration in recycled papers over the next decade which will render these processes unacceptable environmentally.

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