Production of handmade paper from sugarcane bagasse and a mixed grade of waste paper :

Abstract

The production and consumption of paper for packaging has been highly encouraged and taken on in Uganda since 2007 when the government enacted a policy to ban the use of polythene bags. The policy was still re-echoed in 2015. Though the policy wasn't successfully implemented it geared the use of paper packages as an alternative. Today the consumption. of paper packages has greatly progressed% due to online shopping for example Jumia Company, Print Boda in Uganda and food orders from busy customers that rarely have time to rush •to restaurants- However, the need to Create better conservative and eco-friendly alternatives of manufacturing paper is required to reduce on the impact brought about by deforestation. At present, mainly in densely populated regions with high paper consumption per capita% the paper industry is the exclusive user of recovered paper as a secondary raw material. Some paper and board grades can use exclusively recycled fibers, some grades, for example liner, use blends of recycled and virgin fibers with various proportions- of recycled fibers in the furnish depending the paper or board grade. Furthermore; the demand of paper has been continuously increasing at a pace much faster than the availability of fibers from natural sources. Recycling of waste paper, after its intended use, has been found to be economical and eco-friendly (Frantisek Potucek et al, 2011) Scarcity in forest-based raw materials has forced the paper industries to use inferior quality pulp produced from agricultural residues for papermaking. To improve the properties of the pulP2 blending of good quality long fiber pulp is necessary. (Vishesh Pal et al. 2004) In an attempt to improve the quality of recycled waste paper and evaluate the properties of package paper, bagasse was blended with the recycled waste paper fibers. This was done by blending bagasse with the mixed grade of waste paper in to five samples in ratios of 100:0, 80:20,50:50, 20:80, 0: 100 respectively, Strength characteristics such as tearing resistance strength burst strength and Water resistance were tested and compared to each other. Inferior paper sample properties were observed when using 100% recycled waste paper fibers. which was the control sample. The results obtained showed that addition of 20% bagasse pulp to waste paper pulp did not significantly enhance the strength of the paper product. However, it was found that addition of 50 % or more of bagasse pulp to the mixed grade of waste paper pulp resulted in a substantial increase in the strength properties except for the tear resistance strength. The results showed that flexible virgin bagasse fibers can be used as a Lignocellulose fiber for making packaging paper in combination with recycled paper fibers.