Canadian Geographic prints environmental issue on "wheat sheet"

Canadian Geographic magazine and Markets Initiative, the green printing advocacy organization, have collaborated on a pilot project to use paper made from the byproduct of growing and harvesting wheat. The so called "wheat sheet" is hoped to give rise to a new industrial use for wheat straw, which, until now, has been regarded as a waste byproduct. The creators of the new paper say it rivals other glossy papers on the market.

The latest issue of Canadian Geographic, on newsstands today, uses the new paper that contains 20% wheat straw and 40% recycled pulp.

Nicole Rycroft, executive director of Markets Initiative, said the wheatsheet represents a great opportunity to turn agricultural waste products into an environmentally friendly paper. "We were looking for a creative way
to alleviate the stress on Canadian forests," she said.

Canada is the world's largest producer of commercial pulp, but the industry has shown little interest in wheat straw, which is used primarily in China. In fact, the wheat straw pulp used to create the wheat sheet was imported from China because there is no facility in North America able to process wheat into pulp.

Ms. Rycroft said the 15 million tonnes of cereal waste Canadian agriculture creates annually could be used to make 7.5 million tonnes of pulp, equivalent to about 80 per cent of all the newsprint used in Canada in a given year.
Can Geo editor Rick Boychuk's editor's letter in the current (annual environmental) issue says:
We’d like to convince the magazine industry and, ultimately, the pulp-and-paper industry that adding agricultural waste to the pulp mix is a step forward, that it will ease some of the demand for virgin pulp from the boreal forest and offer grain farmers a new source of revenue for what is now largely a waste by-product. The next time we print on a wheat sheet, we want the straw to be purchased from Canadian farmers and pulped in a Canadian mill. We’ll provide regular updates on how the mills respond to our challenge.