Plenty of alternative sources of cellulose for paper pulp exist, and many of them can be used to produce paper of finer grades than paper made from wood pulp alone. This will require putting together the right combination of available alternative pulp sources and producing a paper of high quality, marketed profitably at prices competitive with the established industry. I believe this is possible and that a whole new industry may be realized. If we can succeed in demonstrating the commercial potential of non-wood paper production, we may safely leave it to market forces to make the chipping up of trees for paper pulp just another historical curiosity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The many possible sources of cellulose for paper pulp fall into two categories: those plants that can be cultivated for the fiber as a primary crop and fibers recycled from agricultural and other by-products. Primary crop fiber sources include fiber hemp (Cannabis sativa) and kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinum). Both of these fast-growing annuals produce enormous quantities of high quality bast fiber in a single season. Both plants also have woody stems, or hurds, which may be processed into pulp of lower quality. Sow thistle (Sonchus Oleraceus), Scotch broom, daphne, velvet leaf, and many other plants also merit further research as alternative fiber sources for paper. Wheat and rice straw, sunflower stalks, scraps from the garment industry, and rags and discards recycled from other sources are all useful, as recycled agricultural and manufacturing by-products not currently utilized. Some garment producers pay for the privilege of burying their new, clean, white 100% cotton scraps as landfill! This is incredibly wasteful and very inconsistent with today's environmental consciousness. A pulp mill is the obvious alternative center for a recycling effort. Hemp is one of the cheapest and best sources of very high quality cellulose for papermaking. Until the present century, hemp served as the backbone of the paper industry for over two thousand years. Significant worldwide interest is emerging to return to the industrial potential of hemp, not only for the quality of the fiber, but also because of the favorable economics of cultivation. Other recent studies of non-tree fibers do not include this valuable alternative primarily because it has been illegal to grow hemp in this country for over fifty years. However, times change, and the necessity of developing alternatives to wood pulp has forced governments all over the world to reconsider their position regarding industrial use of hemp. Cultivated fiber hemp contains practically no THC, the psychoactive ingredient of varieties cultivated for marijuana. Fiber hemp has been cultivated uninterruptedly for thousands of years in China, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia and, more recently, in France, Australia, Canada, and other countries. Now American farmers also want to grow hemp, since they expect it to produce two very profitable crops: seed and fiber. I am now waiting for the final issuance of my own permit to cultivate fiber hemp in California, which I expect to receive. The next step is to establish a legal distinction between fiber hemp and marijuana, the former being anything whose flowers yield less that 1% THC, a definition used in most research literature. This will make it much easier for farmers of industrial hemp to get permits for large scale cultivation, without affecting the laws against marijuana in any way. I obtained seeds of five varieties of hemp on a recent trip to the Bast Fiber Research Institute in the Ukraine. The varieties which I will cultivate have been specifically developed for high fiber yields and very low THC content. Since a new pulping design, mentioned below, utilizes the whole stalks of the hemp, instead of just the bast fiber, the crop can be cultivated primarily for seed, and the remaining stalks only need to be chipped up to become marketable products. Hemp plants can produce an enormous amount of valuable seeds every year, so this plan would make the crop doubly profitable to the farmer. The seed has unlimited potential for commercial uses, because of the high quality oil derived from it. Furthermore, the highly nutritious seed is second only to soybeans in protein. It also contains many other valuable attributes: very high in essential fatty acids (80%), and among the lowest in saturated fats (8%). In some circles, hemp seed is even the latest health food. Producing pulp from any variety of source materials becomes an obstacle, since equipment designed for softwood pulp does not easily process alternative fibers. On recent trips to the Ukraine, I saw research being done at the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Kiev, where they have designed a new machine to produce pulp. It seems to offer many advantages over current methods: higher yields, lower production costs, lower capital costs, less pollution, less energy consumption, less water use, and, of particular importance, adaptability to a wide variety of source material. The closed system process recovers the chemicals used and recycles them, integrating all of the major steps of pulp production in one unit. The first phase of my efforts to create an alternative fiber paper mill is well advanced. I have made paper by hand for about seven years, utilizing many of the fibers I want to use on a larger scale. A blend of hemp and kenaf makes a paper finer than either fiber alone. Local weeds, including Scotch broom, coyote bush, sow thistle, and straw, make excellent paper, especially when blended with other, stronger fibers. I have also been making paper from the stalks of hemp plants grown locally for marijuana production, using both the bast fiber and the hurds. Most of the original experimental work with fibers will continue. I plan to cultivate fiber hemp on a very small scale (3000 square feet) and hope to have a laboratory-size pulping unit built for research here, based upon the designs researched in the Ukraine. In this way, I will be able to produce pulp from my own cultivated fiber hemp, along with raw kenaf and other selected fiber sources. I will form sheets by hand, using a Hollander beater to further refine the pulp, as necessary. (I also plan to construct a bast fiber stamping mill for artistic purposes, a project not likely to have much application to commercial use.) I envision the second phase of the project as an integrated pulp and paper mill that would attempt to demonstrate the economic feasibility of making paper solely from non-wood and recycled sources on a larger scale. It would still be scaled very small by industry standards, to limit costs, probably utilizing a set of equipment designed for the smallest production capacity. The design would be centered around a ten ton per day production model of the pulping machine. In order to supply this machine with material, double the amount of raw fiber would be required. Since no more than half of the source material would be hemp fiber, a 500 acre hemp farm would probably suffice to produce the hemp required for this phase of the project. Necessary resources include suitable land, cultivating and harvesting equipment, and the costs of operating the hemp farm for the first several years, in addition to the papermaking equipment and buildings. There would also be costs for supplementary fiber sources (kenaf, wheat and rice straw, fabric scraps, etc.), although much of this would be free. The third phase of the project would be a full-scale industrial application of all of the methods developed in the first two phases. In order to bring costs down to a level where alternative fiber paper can compete successfully with wood-based paper, it would be necessary to adapt all of the components of the project to the scale of the established industry. This will mean extensive acreage of hemp cultivation and the construction or renovation of large scale pulping facilities. We expect that it will be possible to produce grades of pulp which could be used in existing paper machines with little trouble. As a papermaker, I receive numerous requests for quantities of commercial hemp paper or tree-free paper, especially from companies who wish to project an environmentally-friendly image. They frequently request paper to publish either a catalog of products or a newsletter. These customers willingly pay a premium for these papers, currently being produced in very inefficient and labor intensive ways, but I expect that it will be possible to offer alternative fiber papers of superior quality at prices cheaper than wood-based paper, after an initial period of research and development. In the meantime, there is a substantial market for tree-free paper at any price. The uses for hemp seed are extensive, with no limit to the amount which could be used both for nutritional and industrial uses. The demand already exists for any quantity of seed which might be available as a by-product of paper projects. The key to the success of the entire effort hinges upon the development of a successful and economical way to produce pulp from hemp and other fiber sources. Present technology, designed and developed for wood pulp, is not suitable. The new design developed by the Pulp and Paper Research Institute in Kiev appears to offer a great many advantages, and represents the direction the technology needs to go, since we can no longer afford to neglect the abundant alternatives to wood pulp.