Bhutan's first wastepaper recycling plant
wastepaper usually lands up in garbage bins all over the world. But, of late, in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, it has been finding its way elsewhere -- the paper recycling plant at Jimina, near the capital Thimpu.
Started a month ago, the plant recycles wastepaper into deyshos or Bhutanese paper, which has a market in Europe and the Americas too.
The idea to start a recycling plant struck Norbu Tenzin, the proprietor, when he saw a large amount of paper being dumped or burnt everyday. "The raw material was readily available and it means saving on natural resources," he says.
The plant, which was set up at a cost of Rs 4 million, has a capacity of 400 kg of paper a shift and uses an average of 10,000 litres of water. In the last few weeks, the plant has produced approximately 840-850 sheets of paper ( Kuensel, October 30, 1999).
Even though it is mechanised, the process of making paper is tedious for the 20-odd workers. Wastepaper is shredded manually and filled into a processing tub with starch, washing detergent, sometimes a bit of dye and, when necessary, bleach. The mixture is mashed into pulp before being piped into an agitator, a giant mixie, which churns the pulp into finer paste.
From the agitator, it goes through some more fine-tuning before it is sent to huge wet rollers from where the sheets are formed. Waste is minimal and any damaged sheets are reprocessed.
Then comes the designing with bits of ferns or petals. The finished product is pressed to extract the moisture and left to dry. While deyshos are preferred by the foreign clientele, the local market prefers recycled paper bags. With a ban on the use of plastic bags in the whole country, a local market for Bhutanese paper products is already expanding.
"We are working on making the process more economically viable for the local market," says Tenzin.
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