"Every business runs on trees," says Lee Gieschen, co-owner of Royal Printers with his brother, Alan. "But to most business people, the use of trees in invisible. Yet, every two boxes of copy paper requires one full tree. It's no wonder that paper is responsible for close to 50% of all deforestation." Lee and his brother hope to help businesses reduce the amount of deforestation needed to run an office.
"In 2014, we introduced a product called AgriPaper," says Lee. "AgriPaper is made from farming by-products – specifically, wheat straw and leftover sugar cane fibre called bagasse." Lee explains that there is enough unused agricultural fibre annually to produce four times more paper than is required each year in the world.
"This journey started with emails," Lee explains. "At the bottom of many emails is a statement urging you not to print the mail. That's a good suggestion, but it occurred to us that there had to be a better way to make printing sustainable."
