Because I like to start my day out with some good news. Here is a neat article about a company in the UK who are making school exercise books out of a sugar cane byproduct rather than conventional wood-based pulp, and the best feature is that the books are no more expensive.
Ms Teal said using agricultural crops rather than wood gave the added advantage of reducing deforestation, and helped protect fragile ecosystems that would otherwise break down as a result of logging in forested areas.
"In this instance it costs no more to buy an eco-friendly green product than a conventional wood-based paper product," said Ms Teal.
"The Consortium is the first supplier to source this product and with sustainability becoming increasingly important in the classroom, we think that once schools have tried these exercise books, there will be no going back."
I hope the project has legs, if it works out well we may see publishers start producing textbooks from this material as well.
I feel like textbooks can come later when the project is more established, mostly because textbooks are reusable whereas school workbooks are typically not. It is an interesting idea, though. I wonder how it'll progress...
Posted by: Biblibio | July 31, 2009 at 08:54 AM
To me thats shutting the door after the horse has bolted. We are now moving into an era were paper will be used less and less as people read online (ie less printed newspapers and magazines) and students will soon be using computers for most of their work instead of paper. Nice idea, but cant help but think its a couple of hundred years too late.
Posted by: Shane | October 23, 2010 at 04:20 AM