What is?
Wheat straw is considered an agricultural byproduct of cereal cultivation as it consists of the stems of the grains that remain in the field once the threshing and grain harvesting is finished: it is therefore formed from wheat, barley, oats, rice, mile, rye and iron and contains cellulose, lignin, silicates, waxes and minerals.
How it is made?
After threshing the waste material of the wheat harvest is pressed and collected in bales of various sizes and shapes. Straw has been used for energy production in the past, but has not fully exploited its potential. The new, much more advanced technologies allow today to use wheat straw for paper production, mushroom cultivation and as an organic fertilizer.
Different uses
Wheat straw is used for the realization of different materials: bricks, containers, boxes and wrapping paper, coat hangers, combs, pens, straws, glasses, bowls, spoons, dishes, hats, bags, filling for chairs, padding of horse saddles.
The advantages of wheat straw
- It protects forests by saving millions of trees;
- No use of acids and toxic chemicals in the process of processing from wheat to paper and other products;
- Low energy consumption: to turn wood into paper, very heavy industrial processes are needed that consume 10 times the energy used for the processing of straw;
- Low emission of carbon dioxide;
- It’s a renewable and sustainable: agricultural waste (wheat straw) will always be available as long as humans work in agriculture;
- As a building material it is an excellent thermal and acoustic insulating.