The pure money bush: it is used to make banknotes and grows in the mountains

Pasang Sherpa He never imagined that growing a rare shrub in his garden would save his finances, probably forever.

In eastern Nepal, in one of the poorest areas of Asia, this farmer born near Mount Everest found the Holy Grail of the Japanese government: Algeriana bush that Japan uses as raw material to make its new banknotes.

The Algerian, or Edgeworthia gardnerie, is an evergreen shrub with yellow flowers found wild in the Himalayas. It is native to the Himalayan regions of Bhutan, northern Burma, China, India and Nepal and is found in forests and humid places at altitudes between 1000 and 2500 m.

Sherpa started growing it about twelve years ago to make fences or firewood. I didn’t know that from the bark of that plant they could emerge, literally and metaphorically, Tickets.

“I didn’t think that these raw materials would be exported to Japan or that I would earn money from this plant. Now I’m quite happy. This success came out of nowhere, it came out of my backyard“Sherpa told the New York Times.

Why does Japan use Argeli bush paper?

The bush of pure money, as described by the Times, fascinated the Japanese government when it ran out of supplies. mitsumatathe traditional paper previously used to print banknotes.

Japan changes the design of its yen every twenty years and invests a lot of energy in the aesthetics of its banknotes and in meticulously sourcing the natural resources to make them. The current banknotes were first printed in 2004 and their replacements will arrive at ATMs in July.

In 2015, after earthquakes destroyed much of Nepal, Japan sent specialists to the country’s capital to help local manufacturers produce banknotes.

Shortly thereafter, Sherpa entered the business, manufacturing 1.2 tons of usable bark per year. It cuts the argeli and boiled them in wooden boxes.

Today the company Kanpou Incorporated It is a major source of paper used by the Japanese government for official purposes.

The complex production process

The Japanese taught the Sherpas to efficiently work the bush so that it could produce banknotes. They established certain harvest periods to prevent the bark from turning red.

To turn argeli into money, its bark must be steamed with plastic feces and metal tubes, then debarked, beaten, stretched and dried.

Sherpa, who employs 60 Nepalis and hopes to produce 20 of the 140 tons of bark that Nepal will supply to Japan this year, expects to earn eight million Nepalese rupees ($60,000) in 2024.

Most of the tons of bark that Nepal exports to Japan are grown in Ilam district.