BREATHING PAPERS

WHY SEED PAPERS?

We use papers for a number of purposes in our daily lives. The newspapers, the birthday cards, the visiting cards, the thank you cards, wedding invitations, and packaging are mostly done by using papers and once this main purpose is fulfilled, these papers are eventually discarded as garbage.

According to the Waste Management and Central Environment Authority, Sri Lanka generates over 7000MT of solid waste per day and each person generates an average of 1 – 0.4 Kg.  most of these wastes are not properly discarded creating huge garbage pits such as Meethotamulla. Even though people are concerned about the plastic and polythene wastage, most of them are not worried about throwing papers out as they believe that papers would easily decay. However, it was found out that paper is the largest element of many landfills and they take two to six weeks in a landfill to get completely decomposed. So, recycling papers save a lot of space in a landfill.

Seed papers can be introduced as an effective alternative and a sustainable mechanism to reduce paper wastage. Most of the time, we tend to throw away papers but if we get papers induced with seeds, many people would consider growing them instead of dumping them away and that would encourage many people to engage in home cultivation as well.

We live in a critical time where environmental pollution has raised severe threats to the survival of the world. Many organizations, as well as many people, are constantly looking out for sustainable methods of living and plantable papers or ‘seed papers’ would be an effective solution for this crisis!