Ateneo de Zamboanga University

The Jesuit University in Western Mindanao, Philippines

“Plantable Eco-Friendly Paper”

By:

The School of Liberal Arts & The School of Education

Baysa, Jerone Louise G.

Hasalal, Nurhaifa S.

Marcos, Leah Mae L.

Suico, Cynthia C.
 Introduction
I.1.

- The Eco-Paper Project is an environmental pursued project that aims to lessen the two (2)
environmental problems: To try to address deforestation in Zamboanga City by lessening the
use of trees in paper-based productions (Fig1.1) and, to try to clean the litter of dead leaves
around the campus of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University. These goals will be tackled by
creating an eco-friendly paper made from dead leaves as well as other used paper-like
materials, the resulting recycled paper product can then be used in any normal situation that
needs paper, it can be used to write, draw, and even paint. The product is just like any other
paper with the addition of a feature wherein a sheet of the product contains micro-seedlings
that can be planted unto any surface soil and then bloom either a small seedling or a flower
depending on the contents of the paper.

(Fig1.1) Deforestation in Zamboanga City from 2000 - 2020

I.2.

- The Eco-Paper Project is a recycled paper product address underlying problems in the local
community of Zamboanga City as well as the Ateneo de Zamboanga University. This project
aims to answer three (3) questions: (1) Does this form recycled paper be used the same way as
furnished production paper in terms of functionality? (2) Does this form of recycled paper have
the same carbon footprint as furnished production paper in terms of creating a pad of paper?
(3) Can this form of recycled paper be more financially cheaper than the standard furnished
paper? These problems shall be answered through extensive research towards the beginning of
the project until the end with the observation of the researchers and the demographic, to fully
analyze and gather data regarding the benefits, process, and distribution of the product.

I.3.

- The project will begin its study as well as its testing on March 20, 2023 up until April 17,
2023, this amount of time provides the project heads the necessary timeframe to efficiently
study and produce the product. The project heads will be working out of the Ateneo de
Zamboanga University wherein the students of the university will also be the target
demographic of the project since college students have the biggest usage of paper, the project
heads will conduct research on what Ateneo de Zamboanga University students think of the
product presented to them and how it would compare to normal paper. The project research
would only encompass the production of the product and the distribution of the product for
testing with emphasis on the observations and usage of the targeted demographic of the project.

I.4.

The Eco-Paper Project (EPP) was created by Jerone Louise Baysa, Nurhaifa Hasalal, Leah Mae
Marcos, and Cynthia Suico is aimed at tackling the pollution of dead leaves and plants along
the roads and streets of Zamboanga City more specifically in the Ateneo de Zamboanga
University, instead of burning the piles of leaves and continuing to harm the environment or
with polluted smoke, and the constant deforestation in Zamboanga del sur. The project aims to
use these scattered resources to help the environment as well as promote education by creating
usable paper that can also be planted after use, to better accumulate and use our resources and
protect the environment.
 Review of Related Literature Writing
2.1 Benefits of Recycled Paper

- Paper can be reused to efficiently manage biomass consumption, meaning that it has potential
as an environmentally friendly material. On the other hand, because of high energy usage
during the recycling process and transportation inefficiencies, there is a call for the
development of technologies that can mitigate this environmental burden. This method of paper
creation through methods of recycling used paper and dried leaves can reduce by over 90% the
amount of water used compared with the conventional recycled paper that is pulped and
bleached once by the dry process (Itsubo et al., 2020). t is well known the paper production
(likewise the other brands of industry) has enormous effects on the environment.

The usage and processing of raw materials has a variety of negative effects on the environment.
At the other hand there are technologies which can moderate the negative impacts on the
environment and they also have a positive economic effect. One of these processes is the
recycling, which is not only the next use of the wastes. The main benefit of the recycling is a
double decrease of the environment loading, known as an environmental impact reducing.
From the first view point, the natural resources conserves at side of the manufacturing process
inputs, from the second view point, the harmful compounds amount leaking to the environment
decreases at side of the manufacturing process outputs.

The paper production from the recycled fibers consumes less energy; conserves the natural
resources viz. wood and decreases the environmental pollution. The conflict between economic
optimization and environmental protection has received wide attention in recent research
programs for waste management system planning. This has also resulted in a set of new waste
management goals in reverse logistics system planning. (Pati, et al., 2008). Recycling is not a
new technology. It has become a commercial proposition since Matthias Koops established the
Neckinger mill, in 1826, which produced white paper from printed waste paper.

However, there were very few investigations into the effect of recycling on sheet properties
until late 1960's. Recycled paper can be manufactured relatively easily, with end products
competitive in quality to those made from virgin materials. Some difficulties arise from the
economics of collection and transportation of waste paper products to centers for reprocessing.
However, in 2009 the EPA reported that paper accounted for more than one-third of all of the
recyclables collected in the United States with a recycling rate of more than 60 percent.
Shredded wastepaper and other forms of wastepaper products may be utilized as packaging
material or as mulches for erosion control, or may form a portion of compost material for soil
enrichment. When solid waste is utilized for incineration and heat recovery, the paper and
cardboard content provide much of the energy content that is converted to heat. Estimates of
energy savings that can be realized due to recycling of paper products vary greatly. Most studies
indicate that energy savings of 7 to 57 percent are possible for paper products such as
newsprint, printing paper, packaging paper, and tissue paper.

2.2 Problems with Recycled Paper

- The quality of the paper collected for recycling plays an important role in how efficiently it
can be recycled. The higher the quality of the paper, the more paper you can make using its
recycled fibers but paper can only be recycled up to seven times before the fibers become too
weak and too short to make another product. The wear and tear caused by the various recycling
processes — collection, deinking, remanufacturing — lowers the yields of each successive
round of recycling. And some paper products simply cannot be recycled. For example, soiled
bathroom tissue and greasy food containers are not recyclable for obvious sanitary reasons.

Other paper-based products such as drywall and pet bedding, cannot be reused. In addition,
long-use products such as books, official documents and photos are kept out of the recycling
stream for decades. Besides the physical limits of recycling paper, the move to single-stream
collection — where plastics, papers and glass are collected in a single truck for convenience
— has resulted in dramatically reduced fiber quality. Employees at sorting facilities must
manually remove unrecyclable items from the recycling line, which is a costly endeavor. Too
often, these non-recyclable items (such as plastic grocery bags, diapers and dirty food
containers) get missed, rendering batches of recycled content unusable.

Ideally, consumers and businesses would send all of their waste paper to recycling plants that
could create new paper in an endless loop of reuse. In reality, paper fibers degrade each time
they are recycled- paper can typically be recycled no more than five times before it loses
essential qualities like fiber strength and length. Different grades of paper need to be handled
separately during the recycling process. For example, corrugated cardboard and mixed paper
are only suitable for recycling into low-grade paper that is used in products like brown bags,
paper board, and egg cartons. High-grade recycled paper, like the kind that is needed for
printing, can only be made from similar high-grade paper.
2.3 Relation of Previous Studies to the Eco-Paper Project

- The recycling of waste paper conserves our natural resources and will retrieve environmental
quality. Concentrate on recycling waste paper into the usable board will benefit plants and the
environment. This research depends on the investigation of manufacturing of usable board from
waste paper. This manufacturing board can use instead of the board which manufactures from
ordinary wood. (Almtori & Najeem, 2020). The Eco-Paper project is similar to other paper-
based recycling projects that aimed to reduce raw material production in benefit towards a
better and efficient means of creating paper for daily use.

Recycled paper and other biodegradable products such as dead leaves are one of the most
important materials that has been used for pulp and paper production due to its abundance and
cost-effectiveness. However, the pulping and papermaking characteristics of the mixture of
dead leaves and used paper have rarely been investigated. In this project for Eco-Paper,
delignified dead leaves was mixed with used paper in order to make recycle papers with
acceptable properties. The delignification was designed to measure the effects in terms of
sodium hydroxide concentration and temperature, on the cellulose and lignin content of rice
straw, and its tensile strength and water absorption.

The Eco-Project aims to show the potential of using the agricultural waste of dead leaves and
the used paper for the recycle papermaking. The proposed recycled paper hopes to compare to
previous projects that has achieved the adequate properties required for writing paper.
 Methodology
3.1 Materials

The Eco-Paper Project will be utilizing reusable and biodegradable materials such as but not
limited to dead leaves and plants. These will be the base materials for the actual paper, in terms
of the machinery to refine these materials, the project will only be utilizing appliances such as
a blender for the shredding and a wooden mold for the shaping of the paper, these will be the
main materials involved in the actual production of the project. However, the project heads will
also be using a questionnaire form for the assessment of the how people like or dislike the
actual product, this in turn is for the purpose of the acquiring feedback and peer review on the
usability of the product presented.

3.2 Design and Procedure

1.) Collect a bundle of dead leaves and plants.

2.) Put the collected bundle inside the blender and add 1 cup of warm water.

3.) Drain the water from the blender and take out the mushed leaves.

4.) place the mushed leaves into the small wooden platform press and sprinkle in the seedlings.

5.) Compress the mushed paper with the press and let it flatten out and dry.

6.) Remove the formed paper from the press.

7.) Let the paper dry out in the sun.

(Fig 3.1) Actual product when finished

The project heads will be working out of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University wherein the
students of the university will also be the target demographic of the project since the Project
heads surmise that college students have the biggest usage of paper; the project heads will
conduct research on what Ateneo de Zamboanga University students think of the product
presented to them and how it would compare to normal paper. These would be the questions
asked regarding the product:

1) Does this form recycled paper be used the same way as furnished production paper in terms
of functionality?

(2) Does this form of recycled paper have the same carbon footprint as furnished production
paper in terms of creating a pad of paper?

(3) Can this form of recycled paper be more financially cheaper than the standard furnished
paper?

This would be done through a quantitative type of research for the sole purpose of acquiring as
many possible reviews and feedbacks possible, the project heads will be hoping for at least
Fifty (50) students to review the product. With these measures, the project heads will gradually
and diligently answer the posed research question using the answers given by the demographic.

3.4 Project Risk Management

The project circumstances are solely attainable through the aforementioned procedures stated
in the previous chapters. However, the project heads still provide a gradual step-by-step process
and assessment from the production of the product to the reviewing of the product, and have
found that the main obstacle of the project is whether the product would actually be usable the
same way as conventional paper, with this in mind the project heads will conduct as much
research on perfecting the product or yet producing a desired product that can perform the same
way as conventional paper, this may be through but not limited to; Creating a Perfect Ratio of
Leaves and Water, Making sure the molding of the paper is equal to an Equiangular
quadrilateral shape, and Letting the Paper dry out just at the right amount of time. These
Precautions in mind, the project heads will concisely conduct the procedure of the production
of the product.
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