Grass paper: a sustainable alternative and bee-friendly packaging?
by Michael Watson (comments: 0
As sad as it is, every colorful flower meadow needs to be mowed at some point. It may seem contradictory, but if you don't mow a meadow at all and leave it to its own devices, biodiversity actually decreases over the years.* But what happens to all the green waste that is left over from mowing?
Of course, you could throw the mowed grass on the compost heap, where it rots and can later be used as fertilizer. Animals, such as cows or horses, also enjoy the vitamin-rich snack. But perhaps the best use of green waste is the production of grass paper. That's right: paper made from recycled grass! In conventional paper production, it is common practice to obtain the cellulose for the paper from wood. This involves cutting down hectares of forests that have grown for years and are home to many animals. The biomass for grass paper only has to grow for a few weeks or months before it can be processed into paper. Grass paper is therefore sustainable, bee-friendly and practical!
Grass paper is also versatile: whether sustainable packaging, shipping boxes, filling material, printer paper or bee seed bags - the application possibilities are endless!

* If a flower meadow is not mowed, some plant species are displaced by others in the competition for sunlight and nutrients. In most cases, the bee-friendly wildflowers are then displaced by grasses, so that the diversity of species among the plants decreases. When a meadow is mowed, the wildflower seeds fall to the ground, where they can bloom again next spring.
What is grass paper
To produce paper, fiber materials are needed that are obtained from wood or waste paper in conventional paper production. These so-called "fillers" are mixed with water to form a kind of pulp, sieved and finally pressed together - and the sheet of paper is ready! The principle behind grass paper hardly differs from conventional paper production, except that grass fibers are used instead of wood or waste paper.

At the moment, research has not yet reached the point where paper can be made solely from grass fibers. Most of today's grass paper consists of a mixture of recycled paper pulp, grass fibers and water. Depending on the supplier, the proportion of grass fibers in grass paper is around 30 percent.
How sustainable is grass paper? Cultivation, recycling, forest protection
Grass paper is more sustainable, more environmentally friendly and better for biodiversity than conventional paper made from virgin fiber pulp from wood. Let's take a look at the entire cycle of a sheet of grass paper:
The basic building block of grass paper is the waste product from mowing meadows. And there is a lot of it! For some years now, farmers in Germany have been obliged to have "compensation areas" on their land in order to counteract insect mortality. These wildflower meadows must be mowed once or twice a year to maintain biodiversity among the plants. The mown grass is then taken to the grass paper factory, where it is processed further. In this way, grass paper packaging protects our forests, avoids transportation routes and promotes biodiversity.

In contrast to paper made from wood, the production of grass paper requires less energy, less water and fewer chemicals. It also produces much less CO₂! The main reason for this is that wood is much stronger than grass due to its high lignin content. Therefore, much more energy, water and chemicals have to be used to get to the pulp in the wood.
As with conventional paper, grass paper can be fully recycled. And the best thing is: you can simply throw your sustainable grass paper packaging in the paper garbage can when you no longer need it. The recycling process is no different from wood to grass paper!
The advantages of grass paper at a glance
- Recyclable
- Forest protection
- Less CO₂
- Less energy in production
- Less water consumption
- Fewer process chemicals