How It's Made: G.F Smith x Métier Notebooks

Our latest collaboration features G.F Smith, the 135-year old makers and curators of the world's finest papers. The notebook features the cover in our house signature canvas design, as well as a minimal Buffalo Cioccolato option and comes with a G.F Smith insert which comes in ruled or unruled.

We partnered with G.F Smith as we share some of our core values: Attention to the smallest details, the utmost level of craftsmanship and timeless style. Each batch of notebooks are made from approximately 50,000 recycled coffee cups, which comes out to roughly 10 cups per notebook. Here, we spoke with the experts at G.F Smith to learn how waste cups are made into paper.

1. The waste cups are collected, cleaned and baled up in approximate quantities of 50,000 cups.

2. These are then sent to the mill in the Lake District where using proprietary cup-cycling technology, the paper and plastic cups are separated. 90% of the waste from each cup is converted back to FSC certified fibres, while the remaining 10% is plastic, which will be turned into something else (energy or second life plastic products).

3. The recycled paper fibres are mixed with virgin FSC fibres and mixed with water to create a pulp slurry. The mixture is approximately 98% water to 2% pulp, and at this point, dyes and pigments are added.

4. The slurry is then run through various stages of the paper making machine, where using a combination of movements, pressure and heat, the majority of the water is removed to give the final formed sheet. This will be wound on to large reels.

5. The reels are then converted in the sheet sizes and shipped to the G.F Smith factory in Hull where they are converted to the three notebook sizes and coated for digital printing.

6. The notebooks are blind debossed with the logo, flat collated with the text pages then bound with a traditional singer sewn binding, folded and trimmed to the correct size.