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A Swedish startup named PaperShell says yes, and the environment will thank them.

In the 1967 classic movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s beleaguered and confused college graduate character Ben is cornered by one of his father’s many wealthy and influential friends at his graduation party and told one word of advice: “Plastics.”

Indeed, from then on plastics seem to have taken over the Earth, with both good and bad results. Good in that they can be manufactured cheaply and prodigiously, bad in that they seem to last forever and often star in YouTube videos wrapped around baby sea turtles.

Well, now a Swedish startup company called PaperShell is pushing a new and environmentally sustainable alternative to plastics: paper.

That may seem absurd to anyone who has ever had to slurp their double mocha frappe through a paper straw instead of a plastic one, but the more you read about PaperShell the more possible it appears to be.

“PaperShell aims to make components that are more environmentally friendly than press-molded veneer, weather-resistant as plastic, and strong as fiber composites,” the company says on its website. “First out is a highly sustainable load-bearing material solution that resembles an artificially engineered and exclusive wood.”

Paper is pretty much just a different form of wood, remember? So, in a vast oversimplification, PaperShell would mix up a batch of that and press it into whatever shape you want. That could be a dashboard, a spork or, in a release just sent out, parts for a Cake electric scooter.

“Our components are made by press molding, or inflation bladder molding, they create 3D surfaces that are hard and load-bearing for indoor and outdoor products,” PaperShell said.

An online PaperShell brochure shows lawn furniture, for instance, as a potential use. Other references in the company’s website suggest Volvo may be interested. But Cake has been the first company to publicly acknowledge an interest. The plastic-alternative company says it’s quite doable as an environmentally friendly solution to any number of applications currently using plastic.

“A natural fiber composite solution to replace press-molded veneer, plastic details, fiber composites or even press-molded metal. Our solution is based on industry 4.0 production with advantages that enable a highly automated and flexible production.”

PaperShell lists several bullet points about the stuff:

• PaperShell is a natural fiber composite but with the uniqueness of being hydrophobic, UV, weather- and fire-resistant.

• The innovation is based on the same constituents as wood.

• It can achieve many of the same designs and shapes that plastics and press moulded metal sheets can.

• It behaves like a composite, being stronger than plastics and press moulded veneer which enables weight reduction as well as less need for material. PaperShell can therefore replace wood, plastics, fiber composites and in some cases metal sheets in a number of applications in different markets.

• As the amount of bio carbon is very close to 100%, every 1 kg of fossil-based plastics replaced with PaperShell in eg. a chair, will avoid 7.5 kg of fossil-based CO2 being released into the atmosphere end of life.

• It is much more fire-resistant than wood and plastics, avoiding the need for hazardous flame retardants.

• End of life it is recycled in the same fashion as wood in any recycling plant worldwide.

You materials science engineers will want to go to https://papershell.se/material/ to gauge all the mechanical properties, from Tensile Modulus 0 degrees (18) GPa according to ASTM D3039M all the way to Flexural Stiffness 0 degrees 16.8 GPa ASTM D7264. It was above me, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. It even has a fire-resistance rating according to STD 104-0001/ ISO 3795.

“PaperShell is a natural fiber composite that is stronger than plastic but with a significantly lower climate impact: 0.65kg CO2e per functional unit (kg) of material, compared to polypropylene (4.95 kg CO2e) or fiberglass (25.05 kg CO2e),” the company said in a release.

The basic idea that a natural alternative to plastic exists will certainly be intriguing to companies that make anything. Certainly transportation-sector companies like Volvo and Cake project environmentally forward images that would benefit from such a material partnership.

“Cake was founded to inspire towards a zero-emission society, and this naturally involves carefully investigating the best possible materials for use in our electric bikes,” said Stefan Ytterborn, founder and CEO of Cake.“We’re excited to work with PaperShell and hope that we can play a crucial part in finding a material that can minimize or even eradicate the use of conventional plastics in our motorcycles. This is a collaboration that ultimately will benefit the entire vehicle industry and beyond.”

“We are happy to partner with Cake and look forward to further evolving PaperShell into a material that will make the use of plastic a thing of the past,” said Anders Breitholtz, CEO at PaperShell. “We can’t think of a more perfectly challenging testbed for our material than the industry leading electric off-road motorcycle and look forward to developing further PaperShell’s inherent resistance to fluids, UV-radiation, weather and fire.”

Still awaiting word from Volvo about its level of interest in PaperShell.