This Desert Plant Could Replace Wood Pulp in Paper Products
Life has improved greatly for humanity since the advent of soft paper products. These include tissues and toilet paper. Personal hygiene has never been so comfortable.
However, the comfort of a soft roll of toilet paper comes at an environmental cost, with much of it sourced from trees. Luckily, that may soon change. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the biggest producers of things such as toilet paper, tissues, and diapers, has found a potential replacement for wood fiber in a desert plant called hesperaloe.
A Top Contender
In its search for a viable, environmentally friendly alternative to wood fiber, Kimberly-Clark, a company that produces, among other things, tissues, toilet paper, and diapers, researched 70 potential materials, including wheat straw, leftover corn, seaweed, and more. In the end, it was hesperaloe, an arid-climate plant, that was deemed a top contender.
The Search for Another Alternative
According to The Telegraph, the company has been searching for an alternative to wood fiber for years. Manufacturers have experimented with materials such as bamboo and recycled paper. However, these alternatives have been less appealing to consumers because they are typically more costly.
In addition, some of the toilet paper rolls that had been marketed as bamboo-based were actually mostly made of hardwood fibers, according to a press release by Which?. And given that campaigners claim that over 1 million trees are used daily to produce toilet paper, the quest to find an environmentally friendly alternative is getting more urgent, according to The Telegraph.
Pilot Factory in Arizona
Luckily, Kimberly-Clark is now developing a pilot facility in Yuma, Arizona, while working with local growers to see whether hesperaloe can be used commercially for tissue products. For the company, it is the culmination of many years of work.
“This represents an exciting moonshot for Kimberly-Clark and the culmination of more than two decades of materials and plant science expertise,” Craig Slavtcheff, who is helping develop the new toilet paper, told The Telegraph.
Though there are still years of work ahead before hesperaloe products could reach store shelves, the very fact that one of the biggest producers of paper products is taking the need to move on from wood fiber seriously is encouraging.
The search for more environmentally friendly tissues may have found a promising new solution. Who knows? Maybe hesperaloe could be the answer to creating more environmentally friendly tissue products that lower reliance on wood fiber from trees. Only time will tell whether this desert plant shows real potential.
