Wheat straw as an alternative pulp fiber, TAPPI Journal January 2020

Application: As a routine part of sustainability and new product efforts, fiber from wheat straw was evaluated as a potential partial replacement for hardwood kraft fiber. Sufficient technical gaps in the areas of availability, pulping and bleaching, transportation and storage, and physical strength properties remain, making the use of this mate-rial suitable only for specialty niche markets at this time. No clear-cut sustainability advantage of using an annual fiber was determined for this product.

Author: Peter W. Hart

ABSTRACT: The desire to market sustainable packaging materials has led to an interest in the use of various fiber types as a raw material. It has been suggested that the use of annual crops for partial replacement of wood fiber would result in more sustainable products. Several life cycle analyses (LCA) have been performed to evaluate these claims. These LCAs provided conflicting and contradictory results because of the local conditions and the specific pulping processes investigated. Selected LCAs are reviewed and the underlying reasons for these conflicting results are analyzed.