Banana Paper

By Georgina Howden-Chitty,
Journalism Student, Deakin University, June 2004

Banana plantations are traditionally maintained to produce the obvious, bananas. But now environmentally-friendly banana paper is being made from banana palm fibre. While the material this new industry is based on was previously considered a waste product, it is now providing endless possibilities including saving old growth forests.

Tom Johnston and Jo Doecke of Transform Australia are selling all kinds of products made from Ramy Azer's paper technology.

Ramy is an inventor, a businessman and a proud engineer with an environmental conscience. His story begins in his home country, Egypt, where he learnt the ancient method of making papyrus from reeds. He sold the paper with paintings on it to tourists as traditional papyrus artifacts.

"During the first gulf war, due to terrorism by Muslim fundamentalists, the tourists weren't coming anymore," he said. While there was plenty of papyrus, no one wanted to paint it.

It was time for Ramy to take another approach. He marketed the paper in Europe, not as an Egyptian artifact but as an environmentally friendly, forest-free product. Craft shops in Germany and Austria loved it, and Ramy helped fund some of his many university degrees by selling it.

With over four degrees ranging from a Bachelor of German Literature to a Masters in Engineering Science, Ramy says, "nothing is better than education".

He moved to Australia in 1993 to live in Adelaide with his Australian wife after fleeing from terrorism in Egypt. It was then he had the idea to use his papyrus technique on banana fibre, because the giant Nile reed papyrus is made of is not available here. He now runs his own business called Papyrus Australia.

Ramy received support from Adelaide University, the government and banana growers for research and production. He feels he got all the assistance he needed, and believed it was not the government's place to fund business ventures as "You can't gamble with tax payers' money", he said.

Ramy hoped to expand his business overseas and to set a new standard for paper production worldwide.

As Australia is the only developed country that grows banana, Ramy plans to help poorer countries make money from his technology.

Banana paper is promoted as a completely environmentally friendly product, however power is still used in production and diesel fuel is used in the transportation of raw materials. Despite this, Ramy says relative to other paper production, his technique is "100 per cent positive".

While other forms of banana paper are made around the world, the pulping technique used consumes energy and chemicals as well as creating effluent. Because the fibre is not suited to pulping like wood fiber, banana paper made with the pulping technique is blended with wood paper.

Ramy's veneering and laminating technique has taken almost nine years to perfect. It's 100 percent banana fiber, uses no water or chemicals and creates no waste. The product is 300 times stronger than normal paper and is fire and water-resistant and biodegradable.

While he was offered work in the oil industry, Ramy said he doesn't want to destroy the planet. "I'm making a difference instead of making it worse," he said. "It's our duty as human beings to take care of others and the planet."

Ramy was introduced to Tom Johnston at the 2000 World Banana Congress on the Gold Coast. Tom had developed a banana harvester that just happened to leave the trees intact which makes them perfect for Ramy's paper making technique.

"My machine removes the bunch and leaves the tree standing, whereas traditionally the fibre is cut down too. It hadn't crossed my mind at the time that it might be good for something," Tom said.

While Ramy had just been using the stalks of the bananas, Tom suggested using the trunks. " 'I can find you 600 times that fibre', I told him. And I thought 'how big is this'," he said.

When he was a banana farmer, Tom contracted Guillain-Bare syndrome that put him on his back in hospital for 10 months, so he was unable to harvest the bananas by hand. He said "picking bananas is the last form of slavery". It's terribly hard work. Pickers often experience knife injuries and back strain; as well leptospirous or 'wheel's disease' from rat urine dripping over them out of the trees.

So Tom did something about it. With help from Komatsu Australia, he developed a banana-harvesting machine. The first prototype was made in 1998.

"The first one was too small, it over balanced and shot me five metres out of the cab," Tom said. Since then, with some hard work, it has been perfected and it now has a world patent.

Tom is happy that his invention worked out, as not everyone is so lucky.

"Australia is bad at change", he said. "There is no institute for inventors here. We're left with just two out of 100 ideas. The rest are not supported or are sent over-seas."

The Department of Primary Industry held a public forum addressing health issues for all the big banana growers to attend. Tom felt the outcome of the forum was positive.

"I thought they wanted to change," he said, "but they don't want to put their workers off even though they get injured and sick." He hasn't had much luck with the technology since and is now concentrating on banana paper products.

Tom teamed up with Ramy and his technology. Banana trunks harvested using Tom's machine are sent to Ramy to make the paper at his pilot plant in the Adelaide Hills. Then it's back to Queensland with the paper for Tom and Jo Doecke of Transform Australia to make into marketable products.

While Ramy and Tom were previously business partners, Ramy sold his share of Transform last year. However, the two companies still support each other. While Tom is interested in the farming and marketing side of banana paper, Ramy just wants to sell the technology needed to make it. Transform Australia employs Ramy's technology and supplies the banana trees.

The products range from wallets and bags to works by local artists printed on the paper, and they are currently sold in gift shops and at fairs around Queensland.

Joy Gordon of the Australian Gift shop in Kuranda, Queensland, said

"I thought they (the products) were a brilliant idea and I purchased for retail the wallets, horoscope signs on banana paper and some lovely hand painted Australian animals presented as a set of four. Unfortunately they didn't sell very well in either of my shops which are both retail outlets for tourists."

While the products might not be doing so well in retail, Jo says she has lists of orders for large amounts of banana bags, packaging and other products from environmentally aware companies.

"We just can't produce enough products for the demand until we build a factory," she said.

Jo and Tom met by chance when Tom was just getting onto the idea of banana paper. Jo saw the potential of the idea immediately. Having had many different occupations from secretarial services, to managing at a winery as well as writing a book, Jo has the skills and the contacts to help Tom make and market the products.

Originally from South Australia, Jo has a huge appreciation of what many of us take for granted: trees and water. After doing a lot of travelling, she has noticed a shocking amount of detrimental change to the environment around the world.

"Seven million hectares of trees are being felled a year to make paper," she said. "The bananas are already there, we're not destroying the forests. I think it (the industry) is going to be bigger than oil."

"The other thing about banana paper is that it breaks down very quickly. If buried under ground, it is gone in 10 days," Jo said. Left on top of the ground, it takes two to three months to breakdown. Second grade or used paper can be used like a weed-barrier ground cover or even fed to livestock. Therefore, it could solve the landfill issue that we are currently facing. Transform sees the possibility of replacing the guilty plastic bag with banana paper bags.

With no interest from the State or Federal Governments, Jo and Tom are looking to private investors for help.

"We were told our plans were unfeasible. I say you've got to be kidding," Tom said. The Queensland government has not replied to Jo and Tom's proposals and five submissions to the Federal government have been knocked back.

"Because I'm a single voice, it's hopeless," Tom said. Jo believes it's their lack of intellectual backing that is affecting the government's opinion. "Ramy's laughing," she said, "we're just 'Jo Blow'' from the country.'"

They hope to get a big machine running this year that will allow them to produce large sheets of paper at a faster rate so they can start keeping up with demand. A $3 million factory is also planned for far north Queensland amongst the banana plantations.

"It's hard to invest money here", said Jo. She has found investors have been hesitant to support them because of tax laws.

While income from a waste product is being offered, many banana farmers are reluctant to change. Just as they don't want to use Tom's machine to change their traditional harvesting practices, they don't want to sell the trunks, as they are usually returned to the ground as compost for the next crop.

Tom says that the corm and the leaves have more nutrients in them than the fibre and they can still be returned to the soil. Offering the farmers two dollars a trunk they can spend the money on fertilisers anyway.

Having grown up on a sugar cane farm, farmed cattle and owned a banana farm himself, Tom can see why farmers are reluctant to change their traditional practices. Some farmers however are beginning to see where Tom is coming from.

Banana grower Frank Grant told Landline "I've changed my tune, I've backed Tom's idea, I reckon he's on a winner and I can see a benefit for us growers in the industry over the whole of Australia."

Once the industry is up and running here, and the trials and errors are completed, the factory will be used as a prototype for more of its kind around the world. While the team will have to face the difficulties of language and culture differences when marketing the idea overseas, they want to have it completely proven it works beforehand.

Tom is hopeful to start up 'banana fibre farms' that will be grown only for the fibre in the trees, and harvested before the bananas mature.

Ramy, Jo and Tom are all devoted to the cause of making their innovation into a success and saving the environment while they're at it.

"To see them knocking down those beautiful big trees, now that breaks my heart," Tom said. "And if we can stop logging old growth forests then that's enough."

Sources:

Ramy Azer, Papyrus Australia.
Tom Johnston and Jo Doecke, Transform Australia.
Joy Gordon, Australian Gift Shop
Landline Program, 'Banana Paper', Reporter: Prue Adams, 24/08/2003