Since the ancient times people felt the need to record their life and culture. This can be seen in walls of caves, in stone and ceramic plates, in skins of animals etc. Somewhere in the 2400 B.C. Egyptians began to use papyrus. The production of papyrus was done by chopping the branches of the plant (just as the production of bamboo was done in China) and their crisscrossed placement with application of pressure, so that they stack by the juices of the plant itself, which means that technically papyrus did not constitute paper (that is produced of fibres).

During the Han dynasty in China (202 B.C. - 220 A.D.) and by orders of the emperors, many craftsmen tried to find materials more suitable for writing, lighter, more durable and easier to transport and store. This was accomplished by Ts'ai Lun in 105 A.D. who mixed fibres of hemp, mulberry tree bark, silk and old fishing nets. Perhaps Ts'ai Lun followed the studies and experiments of other previous craftsmen, but at least he was the one to declare and to him the production of the first kind of paper in History was attributed. Ts'ai Lun was deified and is today considered the Saint of paper manufacturers in the Chinese culture.

The art of making paper was spread from Chine to Japan and Korea in the beginning of 7th century. To the West it was transported via the Arabs of Samarkand (current Uzbekistan), who captured Chinese in a martial conflict in 751 A.D. Among the captives there were two manufacturers of paper, who were forced to teach them the art of papermaking. Shortly after, factories were founded in Baghdad (793 A.D.), where Harun al-Rasid used Chinese workers, in Damascus, that was the main source of supply for paper in Europe for many centuries, then in Egypt, in Morocco (11th century m.H.) and from there in Spain, where the first paper mill in Europe was built in Xativa. In Italy (Sicily) it came via sea from Middle East.

A map where the course of the spreading of the technology of paper manufacturing in the first centuries is shown.

Up to the end of 14th century the art of paper manufacturing had already expanded in all Europe. The invention of typography by Gutenberg in 1446 A.D. decisively helped to its consolidation and the circulation of the Bible printed in paper in 1455 A.D. highly projected the demand for printed work and consequently the demand for paper. Perhaps it's no accident that the growth of typography and the circulation of printed work coincided with the period of Renaissance.

As typography consumed large volumes of paper, the raw material, that up to then was vegetable and synthetic fibres mainly from cotton and flax, began to be perceptibly reduced so that other sources of raw material were sought out. And then, for the first time, wooden fibres were used for the production of paper. The idea was given by the French Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur in 1719, when he observed a specific species of wasp making their nest. These wasps were chewing pieces of timber and used them in order to construct their nests, that looked like made of carton. In 1774 elemental chrorine was discovered, a chemical that was later used for the bleaching of paper.

In 1798 the French Nicholas-Louis Robert invented a machine for the production of paper, the basic principle of which was to produce smooth, continuous paper in rolls and not in individual sheets anymore. However, he didn't find investors to provide for his studies, unfortunately, and the project was abandoned, until the Fourdrinier brothers heard about this project and decided to manufacture their own machine for production of paper, which they patented in 1807. Even if they never used it themselves, the machine for production of paper in rolls went down in history with their name.

Around the 1850s, the German Friedrich Gottlob Keller thought of crushing wood with a wetted burrstone transforming it to woodpulp, of low quality though. Charles Fenerty also used this way. At that time, in the 19th century, timber was abundant and cheap, it constituted the most suitable material for the production of paper - being rich in cellulose - and it resolved the problem of lack of raw material that had appeared. That is why this issue occupied a lot of scientists. In 1851, the English Hugh Burgess used chemicals for the dissolution of timber to pulp for first time. Together with Charles Watt they developed the alkaline method for the production of paper from woodpulp. Following the example of Hugh Burgess, in 1866 the American chemist C.B. Tilghman improved the method using sulfuric acids. In 1879, the Swedish C.F. Dahl imported more sulfuric acids in the method, from where the recipe for the production of Kraft paper emanated (Kraft from the German word for force). In America, the Kraft method was implemented in 1907, where henceforth the mass paper production became a reality (paper production was doubled and reached 2,5 billion tones per year).

In this stage, the world potential that was supported in the use of timber dominated in the production of paper in the 20th century, as the industrial productive processes rapidly expanded. Shortly after, a lot of people realised that with this rate of production advancement, an alternative raw material would have to be found apart from timber. One of them was Henry Ford, advocate of the use of agricultural remains for the production of goods. Up to 1934, each Frod automobile used large quantities of soya. Nevertheless the industrialists they were proven incompetent to launch an industry based entirely on agricultural remains.

Pictures from the Museum of Germany,
from the Department of Paper History

Meanwhile, as the use of paper had reached the heights, large paper masses were observed in the waste and then it was given birth to the idea of using this paper waste because of the lack of raw material, particularly during the two world wars. Thus a solution to this problem was found that it also helped the ecology. As soon as they realised that the recycling of paper saved thousands of trees, the recycling became one from the objectives of ecological organisations, along with the removal of chlorine that was used for the bleaching of paper pulp.

Today in Europe the rate of recycling has successfully exceeded 50% (specifically it reached 52,7% in 2002) and the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) declares with self-confidence that in 2007 the percentages will exceed 58%. Greece reached a recycling rate of 30,6% in 2002, which is particularly low compared to that of Sweden, for example, that was 86,4% (see the table below).