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The industry that is no longer needed

– The Old Paper Mills –

Paper mills that have produced and processed paper for centuries

Man creates, man abandons

Nature does not need man. Man yes. But it destroys it

Reportage of 170 photographs.

In 1834 a pharmacist from Villa Basilica, Stefano Franchi, invented cartapaglia, (Yellow packing paper).
It was a production escalation so much so that in 1911 the province of Lucca boasted 106 paper mills with about 1,400 employees, mainly women with 65,000 quintals of production per year.

The importance of paper straw is so great that the price of the raw material (straw) was established in the city of Lucca and the reference cost was defined for the whole of Europe. This took place in a small district of Lucca, Borgo Giannotti.

After the war, the paper industry applied substantial changes to the processing system. The raw material that was increasingly used was “waste paper” and drying took place in “hot”:
with this system the rooms used as “spanditoi” (like those in the first photo) have become useless, which then with the passage of time have gone into total decline.