With the environment in mind for as long as I can remember, I started this quest for a solution by thinking about tree substitutions. Sugar canes and hemps have all been placed to the test as they are cheaper to replicate, much more so than pine trees for instance, one of the most common type of trees paper come from. Bamboo has been the other popular alternative, but as with other trees however, bamboo needed the kind of caring just as with any other commercialized trees and more importantly, they cannot be grown in any climate.
Then the idea came to me, as sudden as the spontaneity of the Colorado’s weather, as my wife, daughter and I, were strolling along the hiking path. Looking at the overgrown grass on both sides of the trail, I thought to myself grass exists everywhere and anywhere! In comparison to any form of trees, grass would be extremely inexpensive to reproduce and if, if grass can be turned into paper, then the thought of sustaining that practice, how incredibly helpful would that be in the way of protecting our precious climate, our environment for years to come?
This journey was extraordinary difficult for me, as I am not a scientist nor am I a chemist. I had an innovative vision but I didn’t know where to begin. The only thing I got going for us, for my business partner and I, was the belief that anything is possible. If you persevere, if you are willing to let your mind explore, allow yourself to fail, learn of your mistakes, repeat and repeat, over and over again, you will eventually gain experience and prevail. We started by utilizing samples of grass, made attempts to
turn them into pulps, and recreate the paper making process using the fiber that the grass pulps produce. Countless hours, over hundreds of tries. Weeks turn into months; months turn into years. We were high on the thoughts of being at the brink of innovative sustainability that we kept going. But that’s not to say we didn’t feel the agonizing disappointment of failure after failure. We did get tired, felt demoralized, wanted to throw in the towels. But we knew we couldn’t give up; we knew we were onto something as big as nature itself. Through the fluctuation of extreme temperature of the Colorado’s winter months and summer days, in my garage we persevere, we kept at it months on end. Then, on that faithful cold winter afternoon, when our hands were freezing repeating the steps that were well documented in our journals, we finally broke through and honed in on the proper techniques to replicate the paper making process utilizing grass. At long last, we perfected the formula! We finally were able to turn grass into paper, any kind of paper!
And now, we cordially invite you along to this humbling process. Share in with us our incredible experience. Let’s join and together, let’s complete this extraordinary journey of sustaining the path to a greener future.
Country
United States
Website
https://www.grasstb.com/