One of the major costs (in terms of pollution, energy use and dollars) to producing paper and paper board from wood is removing lignin. I've been tracking efforts over the last decade or two to come up with a softwood that had no - or considerably less - lignin. They'd all 'flop' right over. I'm not sure how usable the 'removed' lignin might be for this process, but there *might* be a potential 'win' here - turning a waste product into something we want.
Just a thought.
Also very cool that they can adjust plasticity without needing to add plasticisers.