Nicole Rycroft, executive director of Markets Initiative, said the wheatsheet represents a great opportunity to turn agricultural waste products into an environmentally friendly paper. "We were looking for a creative way
to alleviate the stress on Canadian forests," she said.

Canada is the world's largest producer of commercial pulp, but the industry has shown little interest in wheat straw, which is used primarily in China. In fact, the wheat straw pulp used to create the wheat sheet was imported from China because there is no facility in North America able to process wheat into pulp.

Ms. Rycroft said the 15 million tonnes of cereal waste Canadian agriculture creates annually could be used to make 7.5 million tonnes of pulp, equivalent to about 80 per cent of all the newsprint used in Canada in a given year.