40 Years of experience in printing and photography – we refer to paper ‘deteriorating’ in a physical process of ‘degradation’. Paper manufacturers have long known that acid in paper is one of the main causes of this process and alkaline papers are much more long lasting and less likely to yellow and age.

If we’re taking paper in mass production, we’ve been using alum sizes since 1999 and we still use them nowadays, but we’ve been cleaning their paper and not the waste. The same goes for sweat and it also creates lactic acid. Organisations dedicated to the preservation of paper based records use a process of alkaline washing to preserve valuable documents.

From Royal Society of Chemistry – Saving Paper: see the following

from Saving Paper. See the following from From Royal Society of Chemistry – Saving Paper (PDF): 21kb.