Has anyone else experienced the high-pitched squall of a leaf blower? It’s a hand-held 2-cycle machine that pollutes more than a Ford F-150. Seriously. It simply moves leaves.
23-year-old Ukrainian biochemist Valentyn Frechka figured out how to repurpose leaves. He moved to Paris where he and his partner founded Releaf Paper, a process that uses no sulphates, sulphites or chlorine to make paper from leaves.
These guys figured out how to produce one ton of cellulose from 2 tons of dead leaves. It takes killing 17 live trees to yield that much. The men only use city leaves so to not disturb the ecosystem of the forest floor.
Four billion trees are cut every year to make paper products.
Releaf removes solid compounds from leaves, dries them, turns them into pellets that are converted into pulp and rolled into sheets of paper, a process that uses 78% percent less CO2 and 15 times less water. They have clients all over Europe.
Amazon boxes, egg cartons, toothpaste cartons, toilet paper and shopping bags could all be made from leaves we’re blowing in the wind.