11. The Performance of Palm Broom as Eco-friendly Paper

These days, trends show that people are becoming interested in using eco-friendly products. Many people start to realize and take concern about safety of families and the planet. Therefore, this project will create an environmentally friendly paper and show the performance of this paper. In Malaysia, the waste from agriculture is becoming enormous especially from oil palm plantation. The wastes have increased by more than threefold yet the remaining of this waste material can make environmental issues. Oil palm fronds, which are made up of leaflets and petioles, are one of the most common waste products in Malaysia’s oil palm plantations. Oil palm fronds are available every day of the year when the palms are trimmed during the harvesting of fresh fruit bunches for oil production. Therefore, this unuseful waste that become a major problem to handle will be transformed into a paper. At the beginning, a study about the effect of oil palm waste on the environment has been measured. Based on the confirmation, the oil palm brooms were selected in the process making of the paper. Oil palm brooms are from oil palm leaflets waste. The production of paper starts with the brooms which, will be crushed into pulp after being combined with water. After that, the pulp will be dried to make the paper. The paper will next be subjected to the Cobb test to identify the water absorbency of the material. Based on testing process, the material shows a positive reaction for water absorption. The average rate of absorption is below 2%. This data show that the material did not absorb water strongly. Furthermore, this paper with more oil palm broom compared to the starch shows the lowest rate of absorption. In conclusion, the waste of oil palm frond can be controlled yet adding its value into eco-friendly products. Besides, this material is fully renewable. Therefore, people can use this product in the future in order to preserve nature for our safety and health.