Changing the World – One plastic bag at a time

Tuomas Mustonen with a Paptic bag

Paptic isn’t trying to create the “new plastic” bag; we’re more accurately creating the “new paper” bag by simply enhancing the qualities of paper to meet the demands of plastic.

We’re planning to replace plastic, as well as fabric, bags with a new and enhanced paper bag that is both biodegradable and extremely durable. In fact, a particular manufacturing process allows Paptic to create material that is much more pleasing to look at and to touch than plastic. Paptic was established three years ago and currently employs 12 people in an effort to productize a novel wood-based material, and it’s production method, to replace plastic.

Producing the new paper material requires no custom equipment. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; the enhanced paper can be produced on the same production lines as any regular graph paper. The difference lies in the handling and management of the pulp. Air and long fibers give “paptic” the durability and strength characteristics commonly found in plastic.

Now that our process is in place, Paptic’s next phase is expanding by acquiring more paper production equipment. This will allow us to provide large-scale product production within a few years.

With a production capacity of 20,000 tons a year, we could produce hundreds of millions of Paptic packages and bags. Sound like a lot? It equals the yearly need of only one international clothing line.

We’re already obliged with existing contracts to produce half of that capacity—but a collaboration with a paper manufacturer or perhaps a defunct publisher with an idle printing press could really up the ante for us. A few such negotiations are already in progress.

That first machine will be a milestone—but we don’t expect our growth to stop there. The packaging market is a billion-dollar global industry. We think we’ll need more than just one machine…

The blog was originally published in Finnish on YLE’s news site. Read the original article: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10036369

Featured image by Juha-Matti Mäntylä / YLE