Balbharati to use organic waste to print textbooks
Paper
made from wheat and sugarcane by products will now be used for printing
Balbharati textbooks. The Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production,
popularly known as Balbharati, has decided to use paper made out of
agricultural waste products to print over 10 crore state school textbooks from
the 2017-18 academic year.
The bureau will scrap the present system of
using wood base paper made of out of tree pulp. A professor from Nagpur, Arvind
Sovani, had filed a petition in the high court in October, stating that the
pulp paper used by Balbharati to publish textbooks was not eco-friendly and
that they should opt for greener ways. In November, the court had ordered
Balbharati to stop the tender process for pulp paper and issue a fresh one for
environment-friendly sheets.
Based on this order, Balbharati has decided
to use agricultural waste-based pulp to make paper for printing textbooks.Sunil
Magar, director of Balbharati, said, “We have issued an all-India tender to
procure pa per made out of agro waste.“
Magar said the bureau requires 30,000 tones
of paper per year to print the textbooks. “We will be using paper made out of
agricultural byproducts like wheat and sugarcane waste from the next academic
year itself,“ he added. Currently, Balbharti prints books in eight
languages--Marathi, English, Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Telugu, Sindhi and Gujarati.
Until now, Balbharati had been using “virgin
pulp paper“ for printing textbooks and Sovani, in his petition, had said that
this paper was hazardous to the environment as it required cutting of trees.
Considering the number of textbooks printed every year by Balbharati and the
virgin paper used for printing, there was a lot of damage done to environment,
Sovani had said in his petition.
Source | Times of India | 3 January 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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