The Beginning

In 1989, Harry Johansing took a surf trip to Costa Rica with no idea how profoundly the country would change his life.

He fell in love with its extraordinary landscape—the ocean, rainforests, wildlife, rural communities, and a way of life closely connected to the natural world. With years of experience working with Kinko’s, Harry never imagined that his path would eventually lead from printing to developing an entirely different way of making paper.

What became EcoPaper began simply: making colorful paper pads to sell as souvenirs.

While traveling through the Costa Rican countryside looking for natural fibers that could be used in those products, Harry began seeing agricultural waste differently. Banana plantations, coffee production, and other crops generated enormous amounts of plant material that were normally discarded. At the same time, the forests and wildlife surrounding him made the consequences of cutting trees for paper increasingly difficult to ignore.

Recycled post-consumer paper was part of the answer, but Harry believed it wasn’t enough. There had to be another source of fiber.

That idea became the foundation of EcoPaper.

Harry began developing methods of combining post-consumer paper with agricultural waste fibers to create distinctive tree-free papers while reducing the dependence on virgin wood pulp. Banana, coffee, mango, lemon and other agricultural fibers could become something useful rather than waste.

The fibers also gave the paper something unexpected: character.

Instead of trying to imitate conventional white paper, EcoPaper embraced the natural textures, fibers and colors of the materials themselves. The agricultural waste became part of the identity of the finished sheet.

Building the company was not easy. In many ways, the journey resembled traveling the washed-out rural roads Harry encountered throughout Costa Rica—sometimes unpredictable, occasionally difficult, but always finding another way forward.

What started as small batches of colorful souvenir pads grew into a Costa Rican paper company producing notebooks, journals, art papers and other products made with alternative fibers. EcoPaper eventually reached customers in the United States, Mexico, England, France and beyond.

More than three decades later, the idea that began during that 1989 surf trip remains remarkably simple:

We can continue making and using beautiful paper without believing that every sheet has to begin with a tree.

That is where EcoPaper began.

We make environmental paper.