NARA -- Tackling the problem of deer in Nara Park mistakenly ingesting discarded plastic shopping bags and waste, three companies in Nara Prefecture jointly developed a type of paper that has little impact on the deer's body.
This paper is made from pulp recycled from milk cartons and rice bran, which is also an ingredient in shika senbei -- crackers given to the deer by park visitors. For now, the developers are making paper bags and encouraging businesses and stores to use them.
The Nara Deer Preservation Foundation performed autopsies on 25 deer that had died in Nara Park for one year up until this March and found that 16 of them had inedible objects, such as shopping bags, in their stomach, with the heaviest item weighing as much as 4.3 kilograms. According to the foundation, four of the deer died of starvation due to their stomachs swelling from the objects they mistakenly ingested.
Hidetoshi Matsukawa, president of cosmetic goods designing and sales company Naraism, who learned of the deer's plight, asked past business collaborators Takashi Nakamura, president of the paper container manufacturing company Nakamura, and Kiyoshi Ogawa, president of the printing design company Bunyodo, to once again collaborate to protect the deer by utilizing their manufacturing technology to attempt to create an edible material.
The developed product, dubbed shika gami (deer paper), is comprised of recycled pulp that contains rice bran obtained from farmers. The paper will not solidify easily due to the rice bran containing a large amount of oil, which results in an insufficient level of strength, but they altered the recipe and came up with other ideas to adjust the strength as needed, depending on the condition of rice bran.
The Japan Food Research Laboratories has also confirmed that the product does not contain any harmful substances.
The first of the shika gami products is a paper bag capable of holding A4 size booklets. Soybean-derived ink is used to print things, including the company logo, on the bag. While the price is still a bit high at about 100 yen per bag, should mass production come to fruition, it is said to be around halved in the future.
The three men are planning to donate a portion of the sales of the shika gami to groups including an organization dedicated to the protection of deer.
"Deer are a symbol of business in Nara. Local companies must protect them," Matsukawa said. "We hope that this will be a good opportunity for tourists and residents to think more about this waste problem related to the lives of deer."
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