Green Field Paper offers fun and unique paper products, including handmade paper, machine made hemp paper, and seed embedded paper. Using their products is a great way to be more environmentally-friendly as a designer, but also a neat way to spice up your projects! We did an interview with Rick Smith, President of Green Field Paper, to give you an idea of what this unique company is all about.

How did Green Field Paper Company get started?

Green Field Paper was founded in 1992 by Jeff Lindenthal under the name Found Stuff Paperworks. He would literally find “stuff” and put it in paper. His passion was paper and recycling. He wrote his thesis on saving a paper mill back east. He was way ahead of his time manufacturing and carrying only recycled and eco friendly paper. He had an organic cotton paper, a recycled denim paper, Hemp Heritage® paper and the handmade paper. That included the Grow A Note® and PaperEvolution® lines.

Jeff took a position with a recycling company and now runs the recycling operations for Monterey counting in Northern California.

We bought the Company almost 6 years ago because we fell in love with the concept and the products. We have since added to the product line with some bolder designs, streamlined manufacturing, redesigned the website and brought about a worldwide presence of our paper.

What is the papermaking process like?

Our handmade paper is made in the old traditional sense using hand sewn brass moulds. We purchase post consumer pulp in dry form that has been de-inked with hydrogen peroxide. We re-hydrate it in our pulper. If it is colored, we add earth pigments (the natural colors from minerals found in the earth). The pulp is then transferred to the vat where each sheet is pulled and “couched” one sheet at a time. The paper is then put in a 30 ton press and nearly all of the water is pressed out. The water expelled from both the couching and pressing operations is reclaimed and re-used in the next batch of paper. The paper is then loaded one sheet at a time and stacked on drying carts and put into drying rooms. The dryer carts are equipped with fans which extract the remainder of the water. Dehumidifiers take the moisture from the atmosphere in the room. That water is also reclaimed and used in future batches.

The paper dries overnight and is unloaded the next morning. Each sheet is inspected for quality of deckle, seed content , thickness and visual imperfections.

How well can you print on the handmade plantable seed paper, is it tough to work with?

Our handmade plantable Grow A Note® paper has been printed on all over the world. The most common method is traditional offset. There is a challenge to it since it is handmade and not uniform. The seeds also present an issue for the blankets of a press or the die in letterpress.

Many individuals have printed using inkjet technology. We recommend that the inkjet printer be “gravity fed”, without having to go around a roller and fed one sheet at a time. We have one customer that has a greeting card company and only prints on a bank of inkjet printers.

What do you tell designers or customers who are wondering why to use handmade paper over regular paper you can buy at any old store?

Our paper is more often used by those wanting to make an impression. The countless pieces of glossy mailers all look alike and are most likely to get tossed. Our paper leaves an impression and has an alternative purpose. We do a robust business in Corporate holiday cards and we end up getting more business from recipients of the cards.

What unconventional projects have you seen people using your paper for?

We have done packaging, hang tags, bookmarks and most recently we made paper with mint seeds that was made into coasters that said “Grow a Mojito”.

As the merchant of green products, what efforts do you make to be environmentally-friendly as a company?

In addition to our reclaiming and reusing the water, we have purchased wind credits to offset our energy usage. We also recycle everything we can back into the paper. We make a paper called confetti from all of the cuttings, bad sheets are eventually repulped and then there is our PaperEvolution line. Garlic skins, hemp fabric, coffee chaff, denim scraps or our Junk Mail are infused in each sheet.

Where can we purchase your products?

We have a list of retail stores that carry our product at http://www.greenfieldpaper.com/retailers.asp
And also direct from us.

What fun ideas do you have for designers that would love to use your products?

Be creative. And to keep costs down try for two colors using screens to obtaining multi color effects. Also to keep costs in line, design a size to maximize the sheet.

Any new products or fun things on the horizon?

We will be releasing new products in May at the Stationery Show in New York . We have a new series with a whole different seed variety.

Thanks so much for the interview Rick and Green Field Paper, we wish you the best of luck in 2010 and can’t wait to dream up more ways to use your wonderful paper!