Khadi Papers supports WaterAid projects in India and Nepal. WaterAid is an international NGO dedicated exclusively to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world's poorest people. Water Aid uses low cost technologies to achieve practical results. Find out more at www.wateraid.org/uk/
At Khadi Papers India we recognise the value of water. Papermaking is totally dependent on water and our supply comes from our own bore well and from our rainwater capture system. None of it is wasted. First the "virgin" water is used for white papers, then it is recycled for light, then dark colours and for crop fibre papers. After all this the water is used again in a cylinder mould production of paper for the local market. No chlorine, bleaches or harmful chemicals are used in any of our papers and the final run-off is pH neutral and has been passed for irrigation use by the state authority. We use this water on our own organic farm where this year Vasudevan grew (among other things) 3-4 tonnes of mangoes, some of which will end up in smoothies on the shelves of European supermarkets.
In March 2001 a representative from Khadi Papers was invited to Bhutan as part of a Royal Govt of Bhutan / EU programme to develop environmentally sustainable exports from Bhutan to EU. Nigel (lucky bastard) went.
see Bhutan Journey
In India the idea of making handmade paper from recycled cotton goes back to the time of Gandhi and the independence struggle of the 1930s. Gandhi sought to revive village based industries not only to create jobs in the rural areas but also as a way of asserting economic independence. This was why Gandhi wore khadi, a hand loom shawl and dhoti made from handspun yarn, products of village industry.
Small scale papermaking continues to be supported in India as a means of generating employment in the villages, where most of India's people still live. India has readily available training and an infrastructure of intermediate technology appropriate to village conditions. As many as 22,000 people work in small scale papermaking, 30% of them women (Khadi & Village Industries, Comission 2003).
Small scale papermaking has big potential as a platform for sustainable rural develpment.
At our own mill, Khadi Papers India, we make paper from offcuts from cotton T-shirts which arrive in massive jute sacks from hosiery mills. As well as making paper from recyced cotton we also make paper from recycled jute (yes, those same jute sacks) and from tropical crop residual fibre, banana leaf and sugar cane. None of these papers are made from wood pulp and there is no impact on India's increasingly threatened forest resources.
In Nepal and Bhutan the harvesting of lokta bark in the Himalayan forests provides much needed work for local people in the hill areas. The bark is stripped and the plants are cropped above ground level allowing them to regrow from the radial root. They can be reharvested after 3 to 4 years. This is a sustainable and renewable forest resource.
Our Nepalese papers come from Milan Bhattarai's GET Paper Industry. Milan's company which was very small when we started trading with him in 1983 now employs 120 people of whom about 60% are women. GET Paper is a member of International Federation of Alternative Trade and is a supplier to The Body Shop under its Trade Not Aid programme. Milan writes: "We run GWP (General Welfare Prathistan), with the support from profit and support from other international NGOs to run various social activities in terms of education, AIDS awareness and envrionment protection. There are about 125 girls going to school with our programs. AIDS awareness is carried out in 16 districts of Nepal and we have developed nursery to grow Lokta in Gotikhal District south of Katmandu."