UTILIZATION OF AGRICULTURE WASTE BIOMASS FOR THE PREPARATION OF SUSTAINABLE PAPER PACKAGING

Abstract

Agriculture waste has been promoted as a raw material for sustainable packaging because of its overall cost benefit over hardwood and Softwood pulp increasing demand for sustainable packaging applications. In India, waste vegetative parts such as rice and wheat straw are neither composted nor utilized as feed. However, due to the necessity for speedy disposal, management problems in the small-scale pulp and packaging sector, and a lack of logistic flexibility, rice and wheat straw are burned openly in fields, generating serious pollution problems in India. Rice and wheat straw were successfully converted to pulp using a double disc refiner mechanical pulping system with a 25 mm space between the plates. Based on the results in the study, wheat and rice straw have low tensile (9.1 Nm/g), tear (3.075 mN.sq.m/g) and burst (0.1 kg/cm2) strength, might be because of shorts fibers and larger number of fines. Nevertheless, blending with Pineapple Crown Pulp increased tensile (9.1 to 13.64 Nm/g), tear (3.075 to 4.5 mN.sq.m/g) and burst (0.1 to 0.6 kg/cm2) strength. Investigation was also suggested earlier that Pineapple Crown pulp Contains long fibers this may be the reason to improve mechanical properties. The use of agricultural waste to create value-added goods has the potential to reduce air pollution, reduce plastic-based disposables, and promote entrepreneurship in rural regions.