This entrepreneur makes paper without using wood

More than 3.3 million hectares of forest are lost every year due to our need for paper made from the trees.

This negatively impacts wildlife and the ecosystem.

Kavya Madappa from Madikeri has been making paper from 2018 without using a single gram of wood.

Kavya’s Blue Cat Paper makes paper from any pulp containing 68% cellulose. This includes cotton rag, lemongrass, flax, mulberry, coffee beans and husks, banana skins and husks, coconut husks and many other agro wastes.

Kavya has 5 units set up in Bengaluru with about a hundred workers collecting waste required for the production of eco-friendly paper. They procure these raw materials for Rs 8 to 120 per kilograms.

Kavya is a Commerce graduate of Saint Joseph’s College, Bengaluru. She had worked for some time in an NGO and later has been successfully running a resort at Madikeri since 2005.

In 2016, she came across the idea of making paper from eco-friendly sources.

She visited the Kumarappa National Hand Made Institute in Jaipur where she learned about handmade paper for 15 days.

Today, she owns a large factory of about 20,000 square feet in Peenya, Bengaluru. The paper produced here helps in saving 30 tonnes of wood per month and 55 thousand litres of water per day.

Kavya Blu Cat Paper’s product line includes notebooks, bags, envelopes, greeting cards, photo frames, table mats, gift boxes, etc.

One of the most unique product is their special ‘seed invitation cards.’ Seeds are put inside invitation cards that can be then planted by the card’s receiver after its use.

“There is definitely a lot of trouble when it comes to eco-friendly manufacturing. We need to increase our productivity in order to cope with large scale manufacturing industries. Currently, we are producing 5000 sheets of paper a day. We also need to constantly increase our storage capacity, said Kavya.

She adds that it takes at least 7 to 20 years to grow a tree. Today, population and waste are increasing at an alarming rate. We must take advantage of it and advocate for environmental protection. I believe in the near future many industries in the world would turn towards woodless papermaking.