While nothing new, banana paper has seen rapid growth recently as a more sustainable option for packaging and paper goods.
Created from plant trunks or peel fibers, banana paper is more durable and has a longer lifetime than conventional paper, making it an excellent choice for sustainably-sourced packaging. Because of the banana plant’s fibrous composition, this paper has a lower density, higher stiffness, and higher tensile strength when compared to traditional paper products.
Banana plants aren’t actually trees - they’re perennial herbs and only produce fruit once. After the fruit is harvested, the trunks are chopped down to make room for new offshoots to grow from the self-replicating stem. Usually these trunks are left to decay in the jungle as a waste byproduct of the harvest.
During my time at EARTH University in Costa Rica, I was able to witness the production of banana paper from local plantation waste. It’s a great example of how readily available and sustainable biomaterials can be used to meet our needs in a circular economy!
Banana paper has a wide range of applications, from sturdy fiberboard used in structural packaging applications to a high-density 'leather-like' paper material that is lightweight yet tear-resistant. Banana plants are composed of long fibers, which are naturally preferable. Long fibers contain more joints that build a stronger network of fibers, so paper made with long fibers have better strength properties. Due to the long wrapped hemicellulose fibers and high lignin concentration, raw banana paper does have a coarse surface posing some limitations on high-fidelity applications.
As far as manufacturing goes, banana paper doesn’t require any additional chemicals to be used and requires significantly less energy when compared to standard paper. Low production cost is also a benefit, as the raw material is already a byproduct of another agricultural process, and is generated quicker than wood fibers typically used to make paper.