November 20, 2008
Students make holiday papers from wheat straw, giant reed grass instead of wood
When a College of Forest Resources student group manufactured holiday papers on campus as a fundraising project recently, they did it without wood pulp, the most common material used to make paper products.
Instead, the paper science and engineering students used wheat straw and stalks from giant reed for the papers. For part of the batch, they left the pulp unbleached and added snippets of ferns to create festive paper that was folded into cards and trimmed for stationery. From the rest they manufactured Husky-purple tissue paper.
Demand for paper products in coming years is expected to outstrip supplies of wood available for pulp and paper, so students learn about using other crops and materials that might be suitable, according to UW junior Lauren Turner.
Majoring in paper science and engineering, Turner is with the UW chapter of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry, the largest association for the industry in the nation. She said the money raised by selling the paper will be used for chapter activities. The group has made holiday paper as a fundraising project for a number of years, with most of what’s produced sold at the College of Forest Resources holiday party, this year scheduled for Dec. 3. After that, anyone interested in tissue paper, cards or stationery that might be left can e-mail Turner at turnel@u.washington.edu.
The papers were manufactured in the UW’s Paper Science and Engineering Laboratory in Bloedel Hall. The lab helps students apply what they’ve learned in the classroom and see how processes are run in mill settings. It also conducts research pertaining to the pulp and paper field. The lab’s manager of operations, Mark Lewis, also is the adviser to the student group that made the holiday papers.
