Welcome to the stone age

The print edition of KAMP SOLUTIONS magazine presents a major innovation. It provides a solution to some of the biggest environmental challenges people and planet face. The story of the production of this magazine will change the way you think about paper and it will introduce you to inspiring opportunities to regenerate nature and reverse global warming as well as to groundbreaking business opportunities that will revolutionize the packaging industry. 

Twenty-five years ago, I published my first magazine. We launched that magazine at the very moment that the Internet was beginning to take off. That means that for 25 years, I have been asked the question why I would use precious resources—trees, water—to publish a print magazine?

Yes, there is something appealing about reading an E-magazine while swiping pages on a tablet. But I know that I am not the only one who appreciates a real newspaper, a real book or a real magazine. Today, I am proud to offer you a magazine that is not a paper problem but instead offers an environmental solution. It is the mission of the content of this magazine to introduce and present solutions for people and planet. Now the print format of the magazine provides a solution too. 

This magazine is made from stone waste. The production requires no trees and no water. It can be recycled forever. And it helps clean up polluted environments. Stone paper offers a disruptive innovation: It can replace 50 percent of the world paper market.

Feel the smooth surface of this page. Make a note with your pen and experience how you effortlessly skate across the page. Try to tear the page. The paper stretches and wrinkles at the tear point before ripping noiselessly, the edges of the tears completely smooth. If you dip the magazine in water, the ink remains unchanged, and the paper dries as though it has never met humidity.

The different experience is caused by the slightly plastic surface of the pages. Stone paper is made from 80 percent crushed stone—mostly powdered calcium carbonate, the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust—‘glued’ together with 20 percent high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a common plastic used for water bottles, etc. In other words, it is—strictly speaking—not paper at all, which by definition is made of wood or other fibers, like bamboo. This is a mineral product, not vegetable. 

Despite the fact that we spend more and more of our lives online, we consume more paper than ever. The global paper consumption exceeds 400 million tons per year. The average American uses 500 pounds (225 kilograms) of paper per year. Europeans consume on average 30 percent less paper. The difference can largely be explained by the fact that—even in the modern online world—Americans are still receiving some 100 billion different pieces of junk mail (about 850 pieces per household) every year.

Although most paper is made from special production forests or tree farms, there are still virgin forests harvested to produce paper as well. According to some estimates, old growth forests make up some 15 percent of the virgin tree fiber used for making paper products. One ton of paper requires the logging of 20 trees. One sheet of paper requires 10 liters of water. Water tables are lowered, and waterways are polluted with the toxic chemical waste from the bleaching process in the paper production. Around 15 percent of the agricultural land in the world is used for production forests where fast-growing trees reach maturity in seven to ten years. In the process, these forests reduce the natural diversity of species and deplete and degrade the soil cycle after cycle. 

Finally, the paper industry is the 3th most energy-intensive of all manufacturing industries in the world and uses 12 percent of the total energy consumed in global industry. The paper industry is also the 4th largest contributor of greenhouse gases. In short: Paper production is an environmental disaster.

But do we not recycle paper? Well, yes, paper recycling is the most successful recycling program in the world and mandatory in many countries. However, paper recycling still requires a lot of water, and chemicals for the removal of ink which penetrates the fibers and turns into toxic waste. However, most importantly, paper recycling can only be repeated some five to seven times. The fibers get shorter and shorter and ultimately cannot be converted into paper again. 

Stone paper, on the other hand, is infinitely recyclable. Both the powdered stone and the polyethylene can be endlessly reused. The use of plastic—made from oil—does not seem to make stone paper environmentally sustainable. However, the plastic consumption stands in a different light given the never-ending recycling opportunity for stone paper. This an example of a very good—and sustainable—use of a fossil fuel product. Used stone paper is shredded and subsequently warmed. The heat decomposes the substance into a paste that is turned into pellets. The pellets are pulverized into new powder for a new batch of paper, with no need for additional plastic in the mix. 

In other words, plastic is required, but it can be reused endlessly to make more paper—this is not an example of the terrible pollution caused by single use plastics. “This the first time that synthetic chemicals are used as they should be according to their functional capacity: Forever. This is sustainable!”, says Gunter Pauli, founder of the Blue Economy network of entrepreneurs and scientists focused on regenerative business.

Furthermore, the recycling as well as the initial production requires no water. “Stone paper can be produced where rocks are abundant and water is scarce”, says Pauli. “That is a complete shift from the present: paper is produced where water is abundant, and forests are healthy.”

The stone paper story starts with a Taiwanese businessman, William Liang, who for decades owned and operated plastic-bag factories. When high oil prices increased the cost of producing the bags in the late 1980s, Liang began mixing stone powder into the bags to reduce expenses. In the process Liang discovered that while increasing the stone content of his plastic, he could create ‘paper’. In 1990, he decided to sell all his 14 plastic-bag factories in China to fully invest in producing stone paper.

It took ten years of research and development to create the machinery that blends stone powder with plastic into paper. The machinery has been installed in four factories in China. Until now, Liang’s company—Lung Meng Technology based in Tainan, Taiwan—has mostly focused on producing notebooks, paper bags as well as niche products like ski maps, restaurant menus and hotel key cards for the Chinese market. Stone paper gift bags have also reached the White House in Washington, D.C. Only a tiny percentage of the stone paper production is being exported. Lung Meng has a few small competitors, but “no other manufacturer is able to produce stone paper with more than 55 percent stone powder content”, says Henry Liang, general manager of Lung Meng and son of the founder. 

The latest breakthrough of Lung Meng has been the development of corrugated cardboard made from stone paper. While the overall demand for paper is decreasing around the world, the market for packaging material is rapidly growing. The Covid19 pandemic has only accelerated the trend of online shopping. Amazon, AliBaba, bol.com, Fedex, DHL, UPS, and many others need more boxes every day. All these boxes can be made from stone paper cardboard. The same applies to the containers for milk and fruit juice in your fridge. Today, these containers are made from composite materials—paper with aluminum and/or wax and/or plastic layers—which are expensive if not almost impossible to recycle. The water resistance of stone paper is integrated in the molecular structure; it does not need an additional layer. These packaging opportunities illustrate the disruptive potential of this innovation.

Stone paper has several other competitive advantages: It is fireproof, it does not tear easily, and—contrary to conventional cardboard—it does not provide an ideal habitat for fungi and insects. Stone paper simply dries after it gets wet without impacting the quality of the material. That is a major benefit for distribution companies working in all kinds of weather circumstances. Imagine a pallet of Fedex boxes standing on an airport platform waiting to be loaded in a plane on a rainy day. There is a flipside: the polyethylene component of stone paper decomposes under the influence of sunlight. If you leave the boxes standing outside in direct sunlight for 9 to 12 months, you would find a pile of powder on the airport platform. The stone paper would be safely broken down by nature without the exhaustion of any harmful gasses.

Until recently, the main disadvantage of stone paper was the heavier weight that increased distribution costs. The first generation of stone paper was up to 30 percent heavier than comparable regular paper. However, that challenge has been overcome through further innovation by Lung Meng. The current manufacturing process blends air with the stone powder and plastic particles resulting in a weight that is comparable with regular paper: The magazine in your hands does not weigh heavier than a similar magazine printed on regular paper.

Initially, stone paper could not be used in printers and copiers because of the heat that these machines generate. That obstacle has also been surmounted by the most recent models of such office machines that produce lower heat to save energy. Stone paper stands ready to invade offices as well as become the material of choice for the direct mailers who flood the United States with 100 billion pieces of mail each year.

The economic argument is simple: The raw material expenses for the production of virgin or recycled pulp paper come to about $750 per ton. By comparison, Lung Meng purchases stone powder for $100 per ton and HDPE plastic resin for $1,500 per ton. Eighty percent stone requires $80 per ton and 20 percent plastic costs $300 per ton for a total raw material cost of $380 per ton. That is more than 40 percent cheaper than regular paper. The cost will further decrease when the crushing of stone is integrated in the manufacturing process. Lung Meng in their next paper mill, that is being built in Taiwan, will begin to crush stones themselves. 

The only reason why, today, stone paper is still more expensive than pulp paper relates to economies of scale. The largest stone paper factory in China has a capacity of 24,000 tons per year. A conventional paper mill has an average capacity of 360,000 tons per year. Next year, Lung Meng opens a new plant in China with a 60,000-ton capacity that can grow to a 360,000-ton capacity in some four years. In 2024, the company will open its first 200,000-ton plant in Taiwan. “When we get to this mass production scale the cost of our cardboard will be far cheaper than cardboard made from natural fibers”, says Liang.

On the way to larger scale production, Lung Meng is first introducing its packaging innovation in the higher priced niche market of the freeze supply chain. Food delivery services like Uber Eats are an obvious next ‘low hanging fruit’ opportunity. The future economic opportunity is abundant. Half of the global annual paper production, or 200,000-million-ton, is used for packaging. “Our goal is a 10 percent share for stone paper corrugated cardboard in the next ten years”, according to Liang. He calculates that the annual production of 20,000 million tons requires 55 plants with a capacity of 360,000 tons. Lung Meng is not planning to build all these factories but instead aims to license its machinery to partners around the globe. Liang: “It is much easier to setup a stone paper factory. Regular paper mills need to be close to trees and water. We can make paper in the Middle East where there is no water.”

It is cheaper too. A Lung Meng feasibility study shows that the construction of a stone paper plant costs about $1,400 per ton capacity compared to $3,600 per ton capacity for a regular paper plant. In other words: A stone paper plant can be built at roughly 40 percent of the cost of pulp paper mill. If you combine these figures with the fact that the raw material of stone paper is also 40 percent cheaper, the disruptive potential of stone paper becomes clear. A successful regular paper mill may show a return on investment of 5 percent. Liang projects the return of investment of a stone paper factory with a capacity of 140,000 tons “in excess of 20 percent”.

The production of stone paper offers major environmental benefits. The manufacturing process uses on average 85 percent less energy, emits 40 percent less CO2—and consumes, of course, no water. Today, Lung Meng purchases stone powder from suppliers that grind leftovers from tile manufacturers. For every ton of tiles, about a ton of stone waste is generated that can be turned into stone paper. 

Stone paper production also offers, as Gunter Pauli argues, a groundbreaking environmental strategy for mines. Modern technology, from mobile phones to electric cars, depends on dozens of metals that are mined. That is a messy process that heavily pollutes the environment and scars the face of the Earth. Mining contaminates soil and groundwater with dust and chemicals, and it affects the health of local populations. It is also an incredibly inefficient process. For example: Gold is purified at an average of two grams per ton—an efficiency of 0.002 percent. That also means that goldmines produce 99.998 percent waste. That waste also suffocates local vegetation, causes erosion, poisons drinking water and threatens the health of communities. All that waste can be turned into a paper that can be recycled forever.

The first inspiring example of this strategy is happening in an unexpected place: Morocco. This North-African country holds more than 70 percent of all phosphate-rock reserves in the world. Morocco exports phosphates—an essential fertilizer for agriculture—all over the world. The phosphate mining leaves a lot of waste which is called ‘sterile’ and considered useless.

Morocco is also a big exporter of agricultural produce to the European Union. Every year, the country imports 400,000 tons of corrugated cardboard to ship fruit and vegetables to the EU. In 2018, when Gunter Pauli was invited to advise OCP, the government-owned phosphate fertilizer producer in Morocco, on a long-term innovation strategy, he quickly saw the opportunity: OCP could build a stone paper factory that would use the stone waste of the phosphate mining to produce the cardboard boxes for the fruit and vegetable export. Morocco would save foreign exchange while simultaneously clean up and add value to the mess of the mining waste. New jobs can be created, and rural communities rebuilt simply using something that was considered to be useless waste in a circular economy.

The ‘Morocco-model’ also allows for, what Liang sees as an ideal, “closed loop”. Cardboard boxes with Moroccan agricultural produce are sent to vegetable auctions in Europe. Supermarkets buy the produce and can return the empty boxes to be shipped back to Morocco. The circle becomes even more efficient when a simple recycling unit is integrated in the supply chain where the boxes are shredded and turned into pellets. “We do not want to ship air”, says Liang. He underlines that stone paper can be recycled in current facilities that process polyethylene plastic.

After thirty years of cutting-edge innovation of his company, Henry Liang is confident that stone paper is at the verge of a packaging market breakthrough. He knows that Lung Meng offers a product that is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the competition and that can be eternally recycled. Waste lands can be converted and cleaned up, land used for production forests can be returned to regenerate nature and reverse global warming while rural communities can be rebuilt with new economic opportunities. Sometimes, it makes sense to go back in time: Welcome to the stone age! [JK]

More information: www.taiwanlm.com or write to: solutions@kamp.solutions