It might save trees, but how do you recycle it, exactly?

CNET reports that so-called calcium carbonate paper isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Karst’s website says, “We could kill trees too. But why should we have to?” The nitty gritty of Karst paper and its environmental impact, however, seems to be a lot less stark marketing talk and a lot more handwaving.

Karst’s product is made from calcium carbonate—that’s Tums, for those of you keeping track at home—bound with plastic that the company doesn’t mention outright on its website, instead calling it “a non-toxic, recyclable binding agent.” Using plastic makes the paper tear-resistant and waterproof, much like a Gladware container or Ziploc freezer bag, or just a sheet of paper laminated in plastic. CNET’s Stephen Shankland says the plastic content means you can’t use liquid ink like Flair pens or markers, but pencil and crayons are okay.

When you’re finished with Karst paper, it’s supposed to be recyclable, but no one Shankland talked to was willing to accept it to existing recycling infrastructure—not even in the Bay Area, which has some of the most advanced recycling policies in the nation. People already struggle to correctly prepare and sort familiar consumer goods for recycling. Since this paper isn’t really "paper" paper and it isn’t considered appropriate plastic for recycling, Karst has exclusive-or’d its product into no man’s land.

Killing fewer trees is good, though, right? Of course, but that’s a marketing-based misrepresentation of what paper is and how it’s made. The origins of paper are in recycling, when people in China mixed leftover scraps of rags with hemp fiber and tree bark, saturated it with water, ground it up, and pressed it into sheets. As demand for paper around the world exploded, trees went from a second choice to recycled cloth to the major ingredient in paper.

Today, because paper is manufactured with an eye toward recyclability, 64 percent of the raw materials to make new paper come directly from recycled paper. Consumers are more interested in post-consumer recycled paper than in the past, so companies sell recycled printer paper alongside the “original” stuff.

Some of the few truly un-recyclable kinds of paper are, like Karst's, coated in plastic. Wax- or petroleum-lined beverage cups (think McDonald’s and Starbucks) aren’t recyclable in the commercial system—put the lid in the recycling and throw the rest in the trash. But wax paper and unbleached parchment paper will safely biodegrade in your compost bin at home.

Karst paper is a cool idea, and hopefully one with a future where it’s truly recyclable. Because it’s waterproof and tear-resistant, there could be great applications where traditional paper isn’t even relevant: a notebook you could write in with grease pencil at the bottom of the ocean, or an amphibious paper airplane. But replacing the waste of the paper industry with a non-recyclable product made of plastic is a wild home run swing without a pitch. (Karst offers a recycling send-in program for consumers who are struggling to find a place for their waste Karst paper.)

For now, this "paper" is confined to proprietary notebooks and reusable wrapping paper, which is a genuinely cool use for a waterproof material that resists tearing.

Caroline Delbert is a writer, avid reader, and contributing editor at Pop Mech. She's also an enthusiast of just about everything. Her favorite topics include nuclear energy, cosmology, math of everyday things, and the philosophy of it all. 

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