Franziska Schneider says: How does your replacement paper compare in terms of energy needs, co2 emissions etc - clearly, anything you replace trees for paper by also have to be grown (whether palm bits or cotton) and processed into paper.

How does that translate in a like for like (e.g. page-per-page) comparison in consumption of energy, water, time and cost - plus, how does it compare for waste generation?

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Thank you very much for your detailed questions.
First of all, as a matter of fact paper is a necessary commodity.
People need paper. The question is, what raw material to use.
Or are you suggesting that paper shall be abondend ?

The green garbage we use, is usually burned by the farm owners, as they do not know what to do with it. 2,5 to. a hectar a year, that causes massive CO2 emissions. Instead burning it, we collect it and transform it into paper pulp.
Our small show plant already saves 1ha rain-forest a day and 250 to. of CO2 emission.
By moving the plant to Thailand and using treeless, we save additional
emissions that would be caused by transporting paper from Europe to Asia. ( Asia imports 80 % of its demand )
Further, we use garbage from existing plantations. That is very important to understand. Other"treeless" paper trials always failed, because they need farmland. At that moment they are in competition with soya, bio-fuels and foremost with the desire of people to have sufficient food supply.

The energy consumption is lower compared to tree paper, but most important, we use much less chemical and of course we run a water purification plant. The production costs are below the tree paper, by many reasons : less chemicals, less energy, less transport,
in-expensive raw material, in short superior technology.

To put it simple, at a 200 to. output plant, the costs per to. are 25 %
below a traditional tree killing pulp site.

Michael Andrew Symonds says: Paper is mostly produced from renewable softwood in the temperate zone, tropical hardwood is too valuable to make into paper.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Michael,

Here is some valuable information:
Pulp Fiction and the World's Ancient and Endangered Forests:
It’s no secret that in most cases paper comes from trees and trees come from Ancient Forests. In fact:
Globally, 71% of the world’s paper supply is derived from ecologically valuable, biologically diverse forests rather than from tree farms. (Toward a Sustainable Paper Cycle: An Independent Study on the Sustainability of the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1996)
Approximately 40% of the trees logged in Canada’s ancient rainforests (trees up to 1,400 years old)* and 65% of those logged in Canada’s boreal forests are used to produce pulp and paper.**
Global paper consumption has increased by a factor of 20 this century and has more than tripled over the past 30 years. (NO END TO PAPERWORK: World Resources 1998-1999, by staff of World Resources Program, 1998 updated June 2001.
Global paper consumption is projected to grow roughly 77% by 2020. (OECD Environmental Outlook, p. 218, 2001)


Every second rain forests of the size of two soccer fields is being eroded.
One hectare of rainforest will contain about 60 different species of plants and about 70 - 120 larger trees. Very few of those are "Hardwood", like mahagoni for example.

According to T.L. Erwin and J.C.Scott each tree will host more than
30 different species of ants, 300 species of insects and multiple species of reptiles,
birds and mammals.

johanna loebbecke says: Dear Markus,

why does nobody else produce paper from green garbage?

Max vl says: This is incredible! And you already proved the process and result as you have established the first factory in Thailand. Due to the high amount of paper used on a global scale, I am convinced it will have a gigantic impact!

Green Congratulations!

Max vonloebbecke says: Markus, we checked your approach an run an evaluation. The result is very convinving.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Johanna,

Thanks a lot for the question, I believe there were several trials so far,
I know of projects in Italy with KENAF, several trials in Asia with Sugarcane and bamboo. I think the difficulties are two-fold :

1. Dead-end agricultural land
The competition about agricultural land is strong, bio-fuel, soya,
food are all competiting aginst each other in Asia, which is the area with the highest growth in population. That makes growing tree substitute plants expensive.

2. Technology
Paper making from wood as the technology is used today, derives from 1845. Over the last 150 years it was optimised to an extend that
it can only be improved marginally.
To compete with such highly sophisticated technology is not an easy job.
In fact it took us six years to reach the point were we can beat the traditional tree-killing process in terms of costs and quality.
To me ecco only will work if it is better price at same quality.
Maybe most other trials failed to achieve that.
Furthermore it is about quantities. Even if another material would qualify, one has to understand the sheer size. The largest packing paper mill in Japan has an DAILY output of 10,000 to..
In order to adjust their machines to our TREELESS pulp, we need to supply at least 10 %.
That limits very much the sources of raw material to produce
TREELESS paper pulp

Gunnar Jonsson says: This is incredable, to think that we actually do not have to rely on chopping down the whole rainforest for paper. I had no idea this was possible. Saving the rainforest is important for the ecosystem and help protect our planet, this new method should be implemented all over the world.

Go Gorilla GO!

Gisli Hardarson says: I am always in favor of innovation that either reduces or halts to any extent our current consumption of our natural forests. The idea in principle looks excellent and I sincerely hope the results are as favorable. Best of luck.

Jon Sigurdsson says: I am extreamily impressed with this new and environmentally friendly method of creating raw material for paper production. I tip my hat to the people doing this. Good luck.

G George says: Finally not one of these "me too" drafts. Wow!

Greg Sleater says: I like this idea, we can all simply refuse to read papers who do not use this technology in order to help spreading the use of treeless pulp for our paper.

Good work Markus!

Paul de Jong says: When it realy works, there is only one word: great!

Soren Kristensen says: Don't you still need trees to produce the raw material for your process? Thus not really treeless? I know I am picky but I figure I should mention this in the context of the title. On a more serious note what are you doing for paper distribution? How can I get a hand on this stuff in Denmark?

Marina Morozova says: Hello Markus, This is an interesting idea and definitely would promote more awareness. However, I heard about this concept before and for some reason it was not made reality. What are your key challenges right now? And how, in your view, is your idea different from the other paperless solutions?
Many thanks,
Marina.

Jimmy Hanson says: If this really can safe the rainforest then I am all for it, this is an idea that has been put forward before and now needs a lot of publishity for to work. I for one would like to spread the word to help keeping it alive.

Keep up the good work

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Marina,

May I guess. Most people do understand that it is a bad idea to kill forests to produce paper. But what they do not understand is the customer. To me ecological only works if it is truly competitive.

To compete with the tree - and forest destroying technology one has to meet three factors :

1. Price
2. Quality
3. Quantity

Particularly the last one is an often under-estimated issue.
A paper fab is a very, very large machine and present an investment
of easily USD 100 million and above. That is why it should have as little downtime as possible.

To introduce new pulp from a new supplier, even the quality standarts are met, requires adjustments to the papermachine. ( downtime )
Therefore, paper manufacturers are reluctunt to do this, if the supplier can not deliver sufficient and stable quantities at a defined quality.

Talking numbers, the largest packing paper manufacturer in Japan
has an daily output of 10,000 to..
If the alternative, green supplier can not at least deliver 10 % of the required pulp, no-one will care for him.

Often people forget that nice ideas must meet industrial reality to really have an impact on environmental issues. We do not live in
fairytail land, but in an globalised industrial world and therefore our green ideas must beat the environmental hostile processes on their own turf.

joerg deck says: What kind of fibers are you planning to use in the non tree paper? Do you think about non wood or may be non natural?

Margarit Constantinescu says: Dear count,

This is a great idea, in theory, but I have a problem with the related math and more specifically with the raw material supply for your paper.

We are talking about replacing the hard wood with agricultural waste. Have you worked out how much crop surface can replace the wood?

I have marginal idea about producing paper, but I can reckon that if you are replacing hard wood with straws the density (vegetation/land surface) ratio is probably 1 to 3. Add on top of that you using only part of the crop let’s say 50% then your density ratio is 1 to 6. Now if we consider that forest are 10 times higher than any crop then your ratio of surface increases to 1 to 60.

This means that in order to supply your factory with straws you need 60 hectares of crops for each hectare of forest, which kind of makes it very difficult.

One of the dangers of replacing expensive raw materials with cheaper one to produce paper is what happened in Romania with the Danube Delta.

Danube Delta is one of the last wild life jewelries in Europe very abundant in reed amongst other things. The Romanian communist regime decades ago saw the opportunity of producing cheap paper from reed so they built a large paper and cellulose plant based on the Danube Delta reed supply. But as expected they did not assess correctly the real supply capacity of the Danube Delta and the plant went under supplied. What they did? To keep the myth of cheap paper going they started to destroy the Danube Delta and replace priceless wild life habitats with reed crops.

Make sure that the history does not repeat!

My point is that people may start cutting the forests to grow crops for straws for treeless paper.

vivian balke says: Markus, is that right that you use organic waste which is available on a big scale today instead of wood? Farmers today burn the waste you use currently. So you have a doubble impact: safe forest and stop burning c02.

Great.

ralph coster says: Timber!!

lars brandt says: Thanks for sending a paper output sample. This is real. 5 points!

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Margarit,

That is a very good comment. And in fact we ran into the trap you descriped. Six years ago we started to grow KENAF. But then we found ourselves in competition about land.

That is why we stopped the Kenaf project, it would have killed the rain-forests as well, since it would require huge fields.

That is why we use waste from existing palm oil tree farms.
Of course you can argue the the palm oil tree farms are one of the reasons that rain forests in Asia vanish, and you would be right about that.

But the existing farms in Malaysia and Indonesia, Thailand, etc. are a fact and already that big that they could replace 25% - 30 % of the paper imported. ( 2,5 to. / hectar / year ) That is more than Asia produces by itself at present, or in other words, Asia would not need to kill its own forests.
The growing demand and growth in population is a fact.
Our idea is to find ways to slow down, or finish the killing of Asian rain
forests. Our technology works, ( we already proved ), is scalable,
proftable and has enough potential quantities and will contribute to this, because if people can make money with our technology. If people can create wealth, they do not have to be convinced about "doing good", they will just do it.
As side further effects the green garbage is not burned anymore ( huge CO2 emissions )and long ways of transporting are reduced, plus "green jobs" will evolve.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Vivian,

Thank you, you fully understood the double impact, plus we create
"green jobs" and as you know, income translates into education and education into awareness and that will have a further impact on protecting
the environment

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Vivian,

Thank you, you fully understood the double impact, plus we create
"green jobs" and as you know, income translates into education and education into awareness and that will have a further impact on protecting
the environment

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Joerg,

On palm oil plants a lot of organic waste is accumulated. Presently
the farmers just burn it, as they have no usage for it.
We developed a technology, which is very price competitive since it uses
less energy and much less chemicals, to turn this "useless garbage"
into valuable paper

devina singh says: ideas lke this have been brought up earlier but have never came out to be successfull!! good attempt !

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Devina,

Thank you very much. I believe that the driving force is "making money",
at least of people who can have an impact on economy.
Please do not get me wrong, this is not a comment, just a fact.

To do what should natural, providing our children a planet to live on,
we should start thinking and accepting the way most people are.
If we adapt our "green" technology to this, people will accept it easily.
In this case it is :
- save costs
- transform garbage into a commodity
- improve cash-flow and profit of your palm oil mill, or plantation

That is attractive, and the side effects are :
- they do not burn the green garbage - less CO2 emissions
- they do not need to deforest Asia for paper
- it creates lots of green jobs and welfare
- it cuts on transport

I love technology and it took us some time to come up with this one.

Alex Hanganu says: My Dear Count,

I am completely with you when you say we need to preserve the rainforest and I think that if your technology works, the pressure on wood resourses will be relieved.

But, we need to keep the forests useful economically, otherwise they will be equally destroyed for reasons different to paper, specially in high density regions like Asia. This means that total banishment and abandon of tree paper could be counterproductive for the very forests.

In South Africa they have huge wildlife hunting parks where you can get the thrill of taking down big game for a price. These parks' goal is to preserve local wildlife and they are successful. Those lands are off limits for human expansion and are taken care of as of any other property.

The analogy is clear I hope. Tressless paper is nice but that does not mean tree paper is necessarilly bad. We need to balance things carefully as more often than not the equilibrium states of our very existence are delicate and unstable.

I hope you find my thoughts useful.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Alex,

Yes, it is useful. In many ways. Doing good, but at the same time to
ignore the nature of people will end in dictatorship.
I see it more like Judo, take the swing in and use it in the right direction.
If people have an advantage, they will promote things.
If people have an advantage of intact forests, they will promote
intact forests. To use natural resources is the nature of people.
With the Asian rain-forests it went beyond usage and moved into
destruction. In Europe meanwhile the forests are growing.
But to forbid people to destroy the forests and leave them with no alternative, will not work. That is why technology can bridge.

Loy Veal says: Don't think it will work in the long run. Too much waste you need. From where?

John Kearney says: Dear Marcus

Please could you define the term green garbage or green waste in your context. In the UK term green waste or garbage relates to anyting that is discarded from your garden including some kitchen waste such as vegetables. Lower down in the comments you intemate that the waste you are referring to is from palm oil plants (plants as in plants or plants as in factories I am not sure.). Am I correct in assuming that the green waste that you refer to is only the waste generated in the palm oil industry, in the production of the oil itself? Am I not correct in saying that not all green waste can be used in the production of paper? I know for a fact that straw has been used in the production of paper as has sugarcane, flax, jute, hemp and kenaf, to mention but a few, but this has not taken off as wood pulp has more favourable paper-making properties. I was under the impression that for making paper, ideally you need long flexible bast fibres that are readily separated.

Loy Veal says: Let me explain the other comment...

I've studies your idea, being the most popular and I've got to say, after studying various charts about how much wood and other stuff are used for making paper that to make a slight difference in world's CO2 exhaust you'd need agricultural waste you can't possible have.

Besides throwing eco paper in the market, people might start wasting it even more, cause it's ecologic so it doesn't harm the nature and I bet you'll back at square one.

More, paper production needs so many nasty chemicals all very bad to nature that if just work on saving the wood for paper production will still be very harmful.

I'd say that your idea may be good for some reasons but to me is more of a problem shifter. Take this course and you'll have the same problem somewhere else.

A world with less paper! that's a good idea!

Maybe you've got impact info on your idea to prove me wrong.

Clara Mota says: Markus,

Loy Veal question is very important...

If Eco Paper turns out to be used as Non-Eco Paper, you wouldn't have probably enough green waste to produce it.

Since you have developed the tecnology for palm oil trees, you would have to plant palm oil trees.

We would have the same environmental problem;

- Shiffting the florests from the original tree species to palm oil trees
- Impact on the local eco-system
- Impact on biodiversity
- Impact on water and soil due to chemicals use

My opinion is that, we have to reduce de usage of paper.

Each country as to find a solution to produce the quantity needed locally by recycling, and developing tecnology to transform several kinds of waste into paper.

Thats the best way to reduce the impact of paper usage on the environment.

Almost every industry that turns Global, turns out to be a Global Environmental Problem...
So, let's think Global and act Local.

If you reestruture your business idea, and make your core business
developing tecnology to recycle several kinds of waste (investigating the countries that have paper industry and the kinds of waste they produce) and turn it into paper pulp.

Borkur Karason says: Dear Markus,

am I understanding it right, that your comment earlier "we use waste from existing palm oil tree farms" means:

A. That you plan to use existing waste, not creating more waste.

B. That you are not planning to replace all conventional production, but simply to deduct from its volume by using existing oil tree waste and other usable waste material for your paper pulp?

If my understanding is correct then your method of creating "treeless paper" will definitely help the rainforest.

vivian balke says: Dear Loy Veal,

1) if your argumentation is that eco paper triggers people to use more, you should stop developing eco friendly energy or low consumption cars as well.

2) As I understand Markus correctly, he developed technologies and build plants to be able to produce paper from material other than wood - different kind of organic waste or fast growing plants. One of the main advantages is the use of far less chemicals and water in the process in comparison with any current process using wood.

3) Use less paper. Yes. And drive less cars or airplanes and reduce the consumption of electric energy.

Vivian

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Borkur,
Sorry to be late in responding, I was at the Scottish coast at the birds preservation near Edinburgh, a great place.
Yes, you fully understood, we use waste that otherwise is burned and
turn it into paper. In this paper making process we use one single
chemical agent, ( much lessor quantities than the traditional paper making process ) and the water is filtered by our purification plant.
So, we do not produce waste, we of course need energy.
The good thing is notz only do we not need trees anymore, but our process as well is more environmental friendly than the traditional one.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: General Reply

This is a competition about business plans. Not about politics and dreaming. In an ideal world we do not use cars, but beam ourselves and we do not pack things into paper, but have a magnetic field protecting them.

In the real world we have to find ways to offer people alternatives to their environmental harzardeous behavior. One way is eco - dictatorship, which will greatly fail, like any kind of socialism did.
The other way is to develop technologies that bridge the gap between
ill-responsible behaviour and obvious necessities.
( pardon my English )
Gorilla Pulp Technology is a great step forward. The present Palm-oil
plants would supply ( in theory ) 12 % of the paper consumption world-wide. But since it is Asian forests that suffer, it would bring a stop to axe Asian rain forests for paper.

Gorilla Pulp opened a new approach to paper making.( In fact, we
already experiment with other material ( green garbage ) for other countries.)

In Europe, we do not have such problem, Europe forests are growing.
To subsitute paper pulp from trees by TREELESS paper in Europe
does not really make sense. It would just cause huge transport costs
and emissions.
Such costs Asia is facing today, since they have to import 80 % of
the commodity "paper".

If people find a monetary profit in doing good, they will quickly adapt.
By that adaption millions of tons of CO2 emissions are prevented
and thousands of hectars of rain forests in Asia are prevented from being processed into paper. Furthermore, a new "green" industry
evolves with many, many jobs. Jobs which will lead to a higher education, which will lead to more engineering capacities and a more
advanced responsibility.
I would truly, I really mean this, be more happy if I would have invented an entire solution to all the rain-forest issues.
I did not, but Gorilla Pulp is a major step, a start of a new technology and with a little faith in the creativity of people and entrepreneurship
this will advance and benefit us all.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear John,

We use material from the palm oil fruits that is not utilised until today.
( usually it is just burned, as it occupies space)
One hectar of palm-oil field produces 2,5 to. a year of paper pulp.
Kenaf, bamboo, etc., do not work out by several reasons, not that much
related to the process itself, but as well related to it.
Process related I may highlight that our technology produces a ratio of 65 %. ( 1 to. input will result in 650 kg of pulp )
That is much higher than the usual ratio with bamboo, etc..
The main reason is size and farm land.
For Kenaf, f.e. you need additional farmland, or you compete about existing land against soya. bio-fuel, etc..

To me ecological only works if it is truly competitive.

To compete with the tree - and forest destroying technology one has to meet three factors :

1. Price
2. Quality
3. Quantity

Particularly the last one is an often under-estimated issue.
A paper fab is a very, very large machine and present an investment
of easily USD 100 million and above. That is why it should have as little downtime as possible.

To introduce new pulp from a new supplier, even the quality standarts are met, requires adjustments to the papermachine. ( downtime )
Therefore, paper manufacturers are reluctunt to do this, if the supplier can not deliver sufficient and stable quantities at a defined quality.

Talking numbers, the largest packing paper manufacturer in Japan
has an daily output of 10,000 to..
If the alternative, green supplier can not at least deliver 10 % of the required pulp, no-one will care for him.

Orlando Gujan says: How many plants do you currently have and what it is your total investment up to date?

Toon Oetje says: what is your current capitalisation in the project?

Alex Hanganu says: This project seem to be over the start-up stage, I am right?

Chris Viva says: This concept is long existing and seems to be in good use already. What do you think is the novelty element in your idea?

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Chris,

Hard work is blessed by the jealous.

Orlando Gujan says: My question, dear count Markus, was aimed to finding out what's your purpose in this contest. Your idea is not new so it cannot be original, it is rather successfully up and running than in the start-up phase , it seems so well funded that € 250,000 prize should make no difference.

Ref your answer to Chris Viva, this is not a contest of who's working harder this is a contest mainly intended by CNBC to take an ORIGINAL, REVOLUTIONARY, NEW and "GREEN" idea and jump-start it to success.

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Orlando,
This competition is called the GOOD Entrepreneur, not the good politician, or good activist.

"NOT GREEN, NOT INNOVATIVE"
Could you be kindly more specific. What is not new ?
The idea to replace Tree paper by Treeless paper ?
No, that is not new. It is like the idea that human could fly, or
do not consume energy and world peace.

Not new ideas either. But still the helicopter was quite an improvement.
Our idea and technology is revolutionary as it is very different
to Kenaf, sugarcane, etc.. Please inform yourself in detail before making comments.

It almost does not require any chemicals - that is a huge difference to
any paper making process and for itself already worth the competition
It does not need additional farm land - that is a huge difference
It is sizeable and very price competitive - that is another huge difference

And greener than green,

- almost no chemicals
- replaces the eradication of thousands of hectares of rain-forests in Asia
- cancels large CO2 emissions by ship transports from Scandinavia
and Canada
- cancels large CO2 emissions since the material is not burned anymore
- provides real "green"jobs in under developed countries and education
will lead to a better environmental understanding.

As far as my title is concerned and the "funding" this is a competition
and if you can not stand the heat, just give up.
This is about business and business plans and success and not
political dreaming and utopia.

Socialism does not work, and actually try hard work yourself sometime, maybe you become wealthy as well, instead of critising people for not being poor.

This is not about who has enough, or not enough, who are you to decide anyhow.
This is about being an entrepreneur and changing the world to an environmental better place by actually practical and profitable business ideas, because only those ideas are powerful and will have a
measurable green impact.

vivian balke says: Dear Markus, it seems to me that some people do not understand enterpreneurship and the requirements associated with it. The world is full of ideas that are green - but nothing else. Those ideas are unrealistic, deliver to small an impact, not able to collect sufficient funds etc. A green idea does not automatically make a good enterpreneur.

A good enterpreneur develivers an idea with proof of concept, with ability to collect sufficient funds by convincing banks and 3rd party investors, and with first results.

Markus, that is what you achieved. Don't give anything about those unprofessional comments about your fundings or novelty above.

Good luck.

hugo bends says: Hey, I love these questions about your capitalisation and investment.

Seems Toon and Orlando work for German Steinbrueck.

Is this competition about the amount of investment done or necessary?

Don't think so.

Orlando Gujan says: Ok Marcus! Now I got it! You really enlightened me!

This it what I'll do:

Firstly I'll try to convince Bill Gates to enter the competition, his company is very innovative and successful and fits very well your understanding of what this competition is about.

Secondly, I myself will try to compete next year in the "Tour de France" with a motorbike. I'll be invincible!

lars brandt says: Dear all, some of the above comments refer to start up stages.

A startup company is a company with a limited operating history. These companies are in a phase of development and research for markets. Even the later stage of start up financing such as forming strategic alliances are part of the start up phase.

Holding investments in various growing and developing business concepts, I face some difficulties in understanding the start up comments about this treeless paper concept.

Markus, I appreciate your investment and willingness to make a difference. Waidmannsheil.

ralph coster says: Orlando, do you have personal or money issues?

Bill Gates is more then welcome - I love green software.

henry knapp says: GREEN Motorbike!

Katha Dominik says: George, the effordable GREEN low emission zero consumption Motorbike in a 1920ies Harley Davidson race.

johanna loebbecke says: Sorry to interupt your conversation Orlando, but please return to the idea of rating participating business concepts - not cultural or financial backgrounds.

I can imagine the jury is sufficiently experienced to make their own decisions and judgements on who brakes whatever rules, don't you think?

Nobody asked anybody to give a low or high score to this or any other concept. And if you have a problem with one or more of the participants, simply don't score them.

lars brandt says: Dear Mr.Guyan,

reading through above comments, the series of your arguments cover judgements on novelty, orginality, business status, funding and participants deserving or not deserving the announced prize.

Having said so, I am shure you have sucessfully started various companies already.

I am looking foreward to you presenting YOUR start up concept in regard to this competition to the above audience.

L.Brandt

Administrator User says: Dear Orlando

Submission of an entry to the competition constitutes acceptance of our rules, which state that applicants can't be supported or funded by a publicly listed company. We also stipulate that if an applicant owns or part-owns a private company it must have revenues of under €500,000.

CNBC will undertake background checks on all shortlisted entries to ensure that these rules have been complied with.

Many thanks
The Good Entrepreneur Team

vivian balke says: I wonder what a certain commentator is trying to accomplish after understanding the negative motivation.

I wonder if his continuous and changing predications culminating in "250'000EUR prize should make no difference" seem to base upon grudge and frustration.

I wonder if those characters play cops and robbers with all good enterpreneur participants.

Orlando Gujan says: Vivian & Ralph,

This is not a beauty contest. This is a pit fight until there will be ONLY ONE. Outside reviews compare this show with NBC's "Apprentice". Watch that show and learn what 's this all about.

If the contestants here believe that by not challenging each other and just engaging in cocktails talks will accomplish something they are wrong.

Ralph, look up the meaning of "spying" and see whether accessing public knowledge is part of the definition.

Don't worry, I'm not frustrated; As it is probably obvious, I support an idea in the competition which I believe has the greatest impact. Guess which one?

Vivian, A guy who just invested 8.5 mil dollars in a business is no match for most of the participants here. This is why CNBC establish the half a million Euro limit to even out the playground.

vivian balke says: Half a million TURN OVER. Not investment!

It is new to me that CNBC established a limit to money already invested in a concept.

I herewith withdraw from this nonsence discussion.

ralph coster says: Orlando, to build a sales pitch of one's own product, service or idea on bashing down competition neither is sportsmanlike, nor respectable or honourable - and scarcely sucessfull in the long run. No matter if in competition, sports or business.

Administrator User says: This discussion has been moderated.

We would like to remind all members that by participating forum discussion or the posting of comments you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws, this includes potentially libelous comments. Additionally, all posts containing advertising or any posts that are considered spam by the administrators will be removed and will result in the associated user being banned.

CNBC reserves the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason.

Thank you,

The Good Entrepreneur Team

Chris Stoate says: Markus,
I've read all the comments. I want to commend you for finding an idea and assembling the necessary resources to get it to a stage where proving out and funding can make it commercializable. I completely agree with your view that we need to align economic interest with positive global outcome to achieve any such outcomes. The challenge overall in this will be how to align: my view is that only ways of incorporating the costs of externalities in goods will achieve this. Since this has not happened, finding a way to be cheaper in hard dollars than a falsely economical product such as paper from tree pulp is a fantastic contribution. Imagine the economic advantage you would enjoy if the disbenefits of tree pulp paper were incorporated into its costs?
Well done so far, good luck in the contest, and I hope your project is both ecologically and commercially successful.
Chris

Alex Hanganu says: Markus,

Is it true that the market for biofuel has encouraged rain forest destruction for palm-oil plantations? If it is true, then your initiative is thriving on that ecological disaster.

You effectively supply a new reason for making palm-oil plantations even more attractive.

Would you care to expel my deep worries on the subject?

Markus count Matuschka de Greiffenclau says: Dear Alex,

That is a good question. Several people went over it already, not in this
blog, but at discussions with eco journalists.
Finally all came to the conclusions that our technology does not support the expansion of palm oil tree fields.
The main reason is the sheer incredible size of the already existing
and unused material, equivalent to 25,000,000 to. / paper pulp/ year in Indonesia and Malaysia alone.

But let me get into more details.

The emotional issue is that palm oil tree farms destroyed rain forests.
That in itself is bad. ( even if some is used for bio-fuel )
Malaysia and Indonesia, ( to some extend Thailand ) already maintain
10 million hectares of palm oil tree farms, that is a pity, but a fact.
If the farm would be planted for paper only, it would never achieve
profit. It is the palm oil that makes the profit. So for the sole purpose
to subsitute TREEPAPER, there is zero gain in planting palm oil trees.

The material we transform into paper is presently seen as garbage.
The farmers, or oil mills just burn it. Per year and hectar of a mature field it will be equal to 2,5 to. of paper pulp.

Since oil mills already have water, should have water purification systems and energy, it is easy for them to expand into paper pulp manufacturing.

Before this existing resources would be utilised, it would take
decades.

The merrit is that using the existing raw material and converting it into
a valuable commodity, instead of just burning it, Asia does not need
to cover its growing paper demand by further destructing the rain forests.

Since we look at 25,000,000 to. / year it will take quite a time to
have suffient production capacities out there to cope with
the annual existing output of raw material.

Our technology will not solve the core problem, a fast growing
world population, but it can put a halt for many years, on cutting
rain forests for paper.

Based on our technology, I'm pretty confident that other TREELESS
processes will evolve. We are the pioneer, for industrial practical
purpose. Other people and entrepreneurs will adapt the core
technology of Gorilla Pulp and transfer it to other material.

With that, we give the rain forests a break.
I hope I did answer your question.
So there will be several develpments triggered, it will finally lead to

Bremley W.B. Lyngdoh says: I like you project Markus and may be can collaborate in the future as I have access to large amount of unused degraded lands in Asia and Africa so we can create million of green jobs for the poor in the developing world.

May the green positive force be with you and your team!

Bremley

Jitin Goyal says: Dear Markus

I have been following the interesting debate going on under your entry, and I think you are on the right track. As long as your paper replaces some percentage of paper that would otherwise be produced by chopping down the rainforest, it's a step in the right direction. There is no silver bullet to fix global warming, it's all about "additionality".

Good stuff, and the best of luck!

Warm Regards// Jitin

Alex Hanganu says: Dear Markus,

The Shortlist is here but the rationale behind it eludes me. We should try to get something good out of this. I will come up with a proposal shortly, I need a little more time to structure it. I think we could form a group of like-minded people whose ideas could have a real impact on the environment. I will keep in touch.

Lorenzo Duque says: Dear Markus,

Your ongoing project is excellent and should be supported and ...expanded,perhaps.

Could your processing technology be adopted using natural waste materials other than Palm Oil Tree ?
We are planning to move some initiatives in China and yours could sure be interesting. Would love to touch that paper !

Kind regards

lorenzo