There’s environmentally friendly, there’s sustainable, then there’s paper that makes you sputter “can they really do that?!” Tokyo’s Teijin and Nisshinbo Postal Chemical Co. have teamed up to develop a printing paper comprised entirely of the former’s ECOPET, which itself is made of recycled polyester fiber derived from … polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.
The benefits? Glad you asked:
- Higher water resistance than pulp-derived paper
- Doesn’t tear easily, even when wet
- Same thickness as regular paper so it doesn’t need to be manually fed into printers
- Compatible with pen and pencil writing, as well as simple scoring and gluing.
The 100% ECOPET paper, eyed as the perfect medium for outdoor posters, maps and frozen food labels, will be marketed in Japan to printer manufacturers and business end users first. More importantly, with all the millions of tons of discarded plastic in the world, it looks like we’ve indentified another, sadly all-too sustainable, paper resource.
