That our planet is crying out for help is no longer a secret. To ease the strain on the environment, everyone has to do their part, including the printing industry. The irony of that message: it can be taken quite literally. For Tourism East Flanders, we recently printed maps on stone paper. Yes, paper made from ground stone waste instead of wood fibres. A completely tree-free material that offers an environmentally conscious alternative to the traditional product. We spoke with Marc Heddes and Allard Lith from Stone Paper, the Dutch company strongly committed to the transition from pulp paper to stone paper. “Both can perfectly coexist,” they explain. “But a shift in our way of thinking is needed to produce more efficiently and sustainably.”
What happens when you get ‘Stone Paper’ wet?
Until a few years ago, Marc Heddes was importing packaging from Asia to the Netherlands. During one of his trips, he met someone from Hong Kong at a trade fair. The man introduced him to a remarkable material invented in Taiwan: paper made from limestone, completely water-resistant and highly tear-resistant.
Back home, Heddes began to explore his discovery further together with his friend, printer Allard Lith. Lith pointed out not only the material’s excellent printability and versatile applications but also its exceptional environmental qualities: no trees, water, or chemicals are needed in the production process.
“In this day and age, where sustainability is so important, that was a real eye-opener for us,” Heddes and Lith explain. “Stone paper has all the qualities of regular paper, but the production process is far less harmful to the environment. It requires much less energy, the CO₂ emissions are significantly lower, and no water is used — which remains one of the biggest issues in the traditional paper industry.
Moreover, stone paper is made entirely from waste and recycled materials. Its main component is calcium carbonate powder, mostly sourced from marble mining waste. This is bound with HDPE, a clean plastic made from carbon and hydrogen. Through a short yet highly efficient process, the mixture is pressed into thin sheets of paper. After applying a top coating, the material is ready for use.”
Today, Heddes and Lith distribute stone paper under the fitting name Stone Paper, with the aim of offering a more sustainable alternative to pulp paper. As a printing company, we can only applaud and encourage that mission. Of course, the print sector cannot do without traditional paper, but it is necessary to think about alternatives that place less strain on our environment.
“We mainly want to raise awareness that the two can coexist,” Heddes and Lith emphasise. “Replacing traditional paper entirely is not realistic, but stone paper can certainly complement the existing range. In recent years, the paper industry has taken important steps towards more sustainable production. However, those initiatives still don’t sufficiently reduce the heavy impact on the environment.
Stone paper offers opportunities to innovate the sector while respecting our planet and its biodiversity. By combining both materials intelligently and applying them strategically, it is possible to produce more efficiently and drastically reduce our ecological footprint.”
That Stone Paper’s message is catching on has become clear in recent years from its growing adoption across Europe. More and more companies and printing houses are choosing the material because of its unique environmental claims. These claims are far from unfounded, as proven by the Castor Gaea certificate that Stone Paper received last year from the Dutch certification institute KIWA. The label is only awarded to products that are demonstrably less harmful to the environment, use as few scarce raw materials as possible, and reuse waste as a basis for something new. That last point is also an important characteristic of Stone Paper: not only is calcium carbonate often reused as a filler in plastics, but the binding agent, a recycled polyethylene pellet, can also be melted down and recycled into various products such as artificial grass, carpets and cement. “In fact, you can always convert Stone Paper back into new Stone Paper. The material can be reused endlessly,” says Heddes. “One of our main ambitions for the coming years is to further streamline that circular process. For now, the facilities in Europe aren’t quite ready for it yet, but a lot of work is being done together with several partners.”
Stone Paper has the appearance of luxurious matte paper and is used for countless applications, from brochures and notebooks to cookbooks, menus and wine labels. Because of its water resistance and high tear strength, it is also often used to print cycling, road and travel maps, as we did for Tourism East Flanders.
“Stone Paper is highly versatile and perfectly suitable for both sheet-fed and web offset, as well as for gravure and digital printing,” explain Heddes and Lith. “What’s interesting is that the paper absorbs very little ink, unlike uncoated paper. As a result, you need to use less ink. In the project with Tourism East Flanders, the material was also combined with the LE UV printing press, which is a perfect match. With LE UV printing, the ink dries instantly, meaning it can’t transfer or smudge. Colours are therefore much more vivid and intense than with traditional printing, producing beautiful results.”
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