Paper Production Impact & Alternative Production Alyssa Boutelle, Baylor Denkinger, Katie Ho, Decker Mecham, Rocio Pajuelo-Lopez, Renata Spinell
May 9, 2023
Wood-pulp paper production negatively impacts the environment due to its reliance on deforestation for material and its production by polluting paper mills. Using fungi for paper pulp can potentially reduce the strain that wood-pulp paper production puts on the environment by utilizing a more sustainable natural resource with biodegradable and antimicrobial properties. Our team devised a procedure to create fungi paper based on traditional paper-making methods to test the viability of fungi pulp. We attempted to create papers made from wood, recycled paper, fungi, and a mix of recycled paper and fungi. Ultimately, the pure fungi-pulp paper and the wood-pulp paper trials did not produce usable paper products. The pulp from the recycled paper mixed with the fungi resulted in a product that replicated some qualities of traditional paper. Further research is needed to perfect the fungi-only paper so that it can compete viably with traditional paper.