The wise men of Hindostan
The Indian government appears to be going full throttle on its proposal to hand over forest lands to the maniacal wood pulp consuming paper industry for captive plantations, ostensibly to meet the shortage of raw materials. And yet, of the total of about 30 lakh tonnes of paper manufactured in India, fully 54 per cent is from non-wood based raw materials. A healthy chunk of this constitutes recycled paper, the remaining comprising paper made from agro-wastes.
Paper manufacture in India has a hoary tradition of using non-wood biomass. In fact, Lt Col Ironside of the British army outlines just such a method in a paper on "The manner of manufacturing Hindostan paper" (Philosophical Transactions, 1774). The san plant (Crotalaria japonica) has long been used in India to make ropes, nets and packing cloths. These, when old, were recycled to make what Ironside calls "Hindostan" paper. Most of the paper manufactured in the 18th century was of this kind.
Paper manufacturers bought their raw material -- old ropes and cloths made from the san -- shredded them into small pieces and macerated this in water for 5 days. After washing them in water once again, they are soaked this in a jar of water which contained 6 parts of sedgi mutti (a soil high in fossil alkali) and 7 parts of quicklime (calcium oxide) for 8-10 days. The pieces are washed and broken into fibres using a stamping lever. The fibres are then sun-dried. After this cycle is repeated thrice, the fibres can be used to make coarse brown paper, while 7-8 cycles later, it can produce a paper of "tolerable whiteness."