Paper

Although they’ve been around for ages, for some reason paper airplanes have never been adopted for commercial use. It could be because they get soggy when wet, they lack any kind of flight controls, or because you would need an incredibly huge piece of paper in order to make one big enough to carry a human passenger. In any case, practical paper airplanes have now perhaps come a baby step closer to reality, with Tailor Toys’ Power Up electric power module for paper airplanes – it allows you to mount an electric propeller on your paper airplanes, so they can fly under their own power. Read More

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says that an area of forest the size of Greece is cleared every year and that a significant proportion of that wood is pulped to make paper. In an effort to curb the needless printing of documents, the German branch of the organization has teamed up with Jung von Matt to introduce a new PDF-like digital file format that actually prevents a user from sending documents to the printer. Read More

Altanus, a Geneva-based watchmaker better known for its luxury timepieces made from materials such as steel and gold has turned to a slightly less traditional material for its PATCH watch – paper. Described by the company as having zero environmental impact, the PATCH was inspired by the papier- mâché floats of Italy’s Viareggio Carnival and is made from biodegradable paper in a range of eye-catching colors and designs. Read More

If you’re into writing the “old-fashioned” way – that is with a pen and paper – then you’re probably already acquainted with Sharpie, the company that brought us those markers and pens that come in all shapes, colors and sizes. Their latest offering – called the Sharpie Liquid Pencil – is really quite unique. It writes like a pen but can be erased like a pencil and it becomes as permanent as a permanent marker in three days. Read More

When most people think of solar cells they picture the rigid glass panels that dot rooftops around the world. But the solar cells of the future will be much more adaptable, with researchers already succeeding in creating highly absorbing flexible solar cells that can be printed on plastic. Now researchers at MIT have gone one step further with the development of the first solar cell printed on paper. Read More

It’s no secret that paper production and deforestation go hand-in-hand. Long before we ever knew of the evils of styrofoam cups, drift-net fishing, or any of a thousand other ecological no-no’s, we knew that using paper meant killing trees. Recycled paper is a step in the right direction, but it still involves the harvesting of trees early in the process. Now, however, TreeZero paper products is offering up TreeFrog copier paper - it’s made with absolutely no wood fiber, just sugar cane and bamboo. Read More

While many environmentalists hope that we can eventually have a paperless office, one company in Japan has developed a machine that shreds paper and then converts the waste into readily usable toilet paper. Read More

Hot on the heels of the 11.5-inch flexible-screened Skiff e-reader is news of Korean tech giant LG's floppy-screened e-paper. The prototype device measures in at a whopping 19 inches (the same as an A3-format newspaper), making it the world’s largest. Read More

Establishing the condition of old books and precious historical documents traditionally involves removing samples of the paper from the valuable archival materials for testing in a laboratory. Naturally such destructive forms of testing are far from ideal. Now scientists have come up with a better option with the development of a nondestructive “sniff” test that can measure the degradation of old books and documents based on their smell. Read More