Providing Technology and Research for Turning Waste into Paper

Paper as a material for religious scripts, office decrees, courts and administrative work became the norm between the 10th and 13th centuries. Kagaz, the Persian word for paper, was adopted as the word for paper in India.

Small hamlets called kagzipura, paper town, were established, one of which survives by the same name in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, where a Muslim community continues to make paper by hand even in 2018. Handmade paper manufacturing establishments of different sizes are located in Sanganer, the biggest paper making centre in western India.

After India gained Independence from British rule, Mahatma Gandhi vigorously promoted traditional village industries of which handmade paper making and khadi, hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, were of primary concern to him.

Apart from sustaining livelihoods, the purpose was to fight the domination of machine-made goods that harmed the environment and killed self-reliant local enterprises.

Mahatma Gandhi’s friend and economic advisor J.C Kumarappa, India’s first Chartered Accountant, helped formulate his economic approach.

Today, the J. C. Kumarappa Research Institute near Sanganer in Rajasthan, has found nearly 40 different waste materials that can produce paper, including damaged currency notes.

Kumarappa National Handmade Paper Institute

On the wide wall at the entry gates of the Kumarappa National Handmade Paper Institute in Jaipur, Rajasthan, is an unmissable message in Hindi asking everyone to save trees by using handmade paper. It is the only institute of its kind in Asia, established in 1994, researching the possibilities of using all kinds of alternate materials to make paper by hand.

Work at the KNHPI’s well-equipped laboratory extends to examining the techno-economic feasibility of each sample.

It assists in setting up pilot plants and conducts training, along with organising promotional programs and participating in major paper trade fairs.

A technician operates a small press to make a flat circular piece out of pulp from the material being tested.

What comes out of the press in a circular form is dried and tested for various properties. They are fixed on a board in rows in their laboratory.

Around 40 diverse fibres and other organic materials have been tested already. Many of these have been taken up for production by various agencies.

Banana fibre in different stages of preparation, and the paper made from it after bleaching at the KNHPI. This paper, when laminated, resists decay from moisture, fungus or insects like silver fish.

Mustard sticks, Endo-cocoon silk pulp, Palm leaf, Bamboo, Jawar (sorghum flour) and Sisal are some of the alternate materials tested and found suitable for making paper.

The most commonly used raw material for making paper by hand is hosiery waste, whether coloured or white. This is always available in bulk from hosiery garment factories located in the textile production areas in India.

Hosiery waste is nearly always mixed with other fibres or animal dung.

This somewhat unidentifiable material is a heap of shredded Indian currency notes. Old notes are exchanged for new ones at banks and even on the streets of Indian pavements where entrepreneurs exchange them at a small premium.

When the government demonetizes certain currency notes, a large quantity is made useless for anything but recycling.

When the Indian government announced demonetization in November 2016, a certain
denomination became redundant.

A pile of such shredded notes lies beside a newly minted two-hundred rupee note.

The Reserve Bank of India, which controls the minting and printing of currency sends blocks of shredded notes from its Jaipur Branch to the KNHPI for conversion into file covers for use in its offices.

It prints this information on the covers of the files to inform users about recycling.

Cow dung has uses in rural India. Conversion into paper is an additional benefit not foreseen by cattle owners.

Jute tissue paper is unique as it is originally a tough, coarse fibre that has been made sheer while retaining its strength simply through the processes of making handmade paper.

Pineapple fibre has been used for textile weaving in S. Asian countries. The Institute in Jaipur demonstrates its possibilities as paper.

A worker at the Institute shows how ‘marbled’ paper is created when colours have been mixed into the pulp.

Even while a formal a formal government-circulated photograph of Mahatma Gandhi adorns the inner entrance of the KNHPI, an odd sketch of him by an unknown artist appeared pasted on an electrical metre box.

But for Gandhi, the skill of handmade paper making would have died a quiet death by the time India was free from colonial rule.

The textures of rejected papers that remain after experimentation and production have a beauty of their own.

Read more about handmade paper industry here:
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