The city of Almere and Millvision turn water plants into paper
The city of Almere, working together with local stakeholders and the company Millvision, has developed an innovative circular economy partnership.
Since Almere is built on land reclaimed from the sea, its Weerwater lake is the home of fast growing aquatic plants, that are a problem for the local watersports and catering businesses.
Once removed from the water, the plants are now integrated by the paper company Millvision into biomass blends used to produce sustainable paper.
Paper produced in this way involves new technologies that use residual biomass blends and addresses a challenge in a circular way.
This aquatic plant is a local and renewable input for paper production. It is also circular as something that would otherwise be discarded as waste and need to be taken away and incinerated, is instead used as a raw material.
Products that have used biomass paste using the aquatic plants have proven to be cheaper than their non-circular counterparts. Therefore these plants have been transformed in many products including paper and airplane lunch boxes.
The project improved the recreational use of the lake, and helped cut the costs of the city lake management and maintenance for the local authorities. It also created a local supply of raw material for the paper and pulp industry.
Moreover, because of the aquatic plants project, seven other projects started to make use of waste products.