In Australia, a luxury stationary brand is trying to replace trees as the source of its paper with stone.
According to Fast Company, Karst’s notebooks feel like competitors like Moleskin but are waterproof, resistant to tearing, recyclable, and carbon neutral.
Karst uses ground calcium carbonate mixed with small amounts of resin.
Founders Jon Tse and Kevin Garcia got the idea from a similar process in Taiwan, which used the stone paper for industrial applications. They realized it could be used for paper, reducing the degradation of forests from the production of paper and tissue products like toilet paper and paper towels.
“The paper space is enormous, with multiple players doing billions of dollars in annual revenue with traditional paper,” Tse tells Fast Company. “The industry may not be sexy, but it is huge.”