Recycled Water Proof Tear Resistant Stone Paper 192gsm Synthetic Paper Biodegradable For Shopping Bag Stationery

Stone paper is a completely non-toxic, biodegradable alternative to paper. It is suited for many types of printing including offset lithography and screenprint. True to the name, Stone paper consists mostly of calcium carbonate, a substance found in rocks and is completely tree-free. The paper will degrade safely, without the exhaustion of harmful gasses, and be completely gone in 9 to 12 months if left in nature. It can also be easily burned without the release of harmful gasses.

No trees, water, toxins or bleach are used in the production of Stone paper. Unused or excess Stone paper can be easily recycled into new Stone paper. Because it is tree free, and as a result fibre-free, it doesn’t absorb ink like traditional wood pulp paper and therefore uses 15 to 20% less ink during print in comparison to wood pulp paper. This results in an extremely sharp and crisp image.

The Environmental Impact

The most obvious difference between stone paper and traditional paper is the amount of raw material that is needed to produce the last. For producing stone paper no trees are cut and no water is used, it has low carbon emissions and it requires no acid, base or bleach during production.

Stone paper is recyclable; it needs to be recycled with Type 2 plastics because of HDPE. Beyond being recyclable, stone paper is photodegradable with 14-18 months of sunlight exposure. It’s not clear, however, what happens to the HDPE component after that process occurs.

The Features of (RPD) Rich Mineral Paper Double Coated Stone Paper
For paper applications
100-200 microns thick
80% calcium carbonate + 20%PE

1. How is stone paper made?

The stone paper production process is an invention from Taiwan. Over the past 20 years, a technology was developed to produce paper with less impact on the World than traditional pulp paper. The stone paper now has a Cradle to Cradle silver certificate and the technology is spreading rapidly around the World. We would like to share the basic process of making stone paper.

The stones used for the production of stone paper are calcium carbonate, and come from mines. The color of the stones, is the color that the paper will take on. Therefore, mainly white/yellow-white stones are used.

These stones are ground to dust, then mixed with a little (partly recycled) HDPE. This component functions as ‘glue’ for the stone minerals. Due to this combination of resources, recycling of the material becomes infinite. The Calcium Carbonate minerals don’t lose their form, as opposed to pulp paper fibers that do break after recycling and end up as waste in the end.

The heated mix of HDPE and dust pellets, become a texture comparable to a balloon. This mixture can be stretched out very high, and thus as thin as wished for. At the same time the material cools down and can then be rolled up into paper rolls.

2. How to recycle stone paper?

Stone paper is made from original stonep powder and can thus be recycled easily.

In theory, stonepaper is infinitely recyclable. If there were a stonepaper recycling stream, we would be able to fully re-use all stonepaper. However, in practice this still works a bit different, mainly due to a lack of sufficient volume for an own recycling stream.

We advise you to throw away stone paper, with plastic recycling (stream 2). This way, the paper can be fully incorporated in an existing recycling stream. The Calcium Carbonate (the stone that is used) is already a common additive to some plastic products and will thus be properly recycled.

Stonepaper will be recognized as a non-pulppaper product in most recycling streams that we know of. It will thus be filtered out with other products that are not recyclable in a paper recycling stream. Then, it will be processed according to the facilities rules. Sometimes this means that it will be burned, or that it will be sorted and used in proper plastic recycling. The stonepaper will in fact be recognized as a plastic-type product.

Just to make sure – we recommend you recycle stone paper with plastic recycling.