Posted by on Jan 21, 2012 in
Essay Paper Recycled Paper: Exploding the Myths
Paper and paper products are the largest single component of society’s waste stream. The movement to recycle paper and manufacture products is primarily an effort to reduce the amount of costly, disposable waste. When we choose to use recycled paper for our businesses and homes, we don’t have to sacrifice quality. Recycled paper is readily available in many high quality grades meeting the same technical specifications as virgin (tree) paper. The quality of recycled paper has improved significantly over the years, so that it performs well in office copiers, fax machines, printers and printing machines.
The First Paper Mill in the U.S. Recycled
Believe it or not, the very first paper mill originated in the U.S. colonies in 1690 close to Philadelphia, and operated as a recycling mill. The paper mill created paper from recycled cotton and rags. It wasn’t until the 1800s that papermakers learned to make paper from trees. Back then papermakers thought the resources of the forest were limitless and capable of constantly renewing itself. Today we realize that our natural resources do have limits and sustainable alternatives must be implemented to protect the world’s environment.
Just the Facts
Recycled paper is widely used in products today. Newspapers, magazines, books catalogs, direct mail, tissue and towel products, packaging products and more use recycled paper. Still, there are many myths surrounding recycling and recycled paper.
Myth 1: Recycled paper doesn’t have a professional appearance.
You can easily find a variety of quality and grades available. You’ll find paper made just for business cards, letterhead, and brochures, tissue and towel papers and more just as easily in recycled paper products. Recycled paper is often cost-comparative to virgin paper.
Myth 2: It doesn’t make sense to buy recycled products because they cost more. In the instances where recycled paper does cost more than virgin paper, the average cost difference is generally around 10 to 20-percent. The tremendous benefits to the environment outweigh this cost difference in the end.
Myth 3: You compromise quality when you go with recycled paper products.
When recycled paper was first introduced, it was known for being discolored and uneven in texture and appearance. Today’s recycled paper products with even 100-percent post consumer content are comparable in quality to virgin paper products.
Myth 4: All paper is recycled now anyway.
Actually post-consumer recycled paper comprises only about 10-percent of the printing and stationary market. 90-percent of these industries still use virgin paper.
Myth 5: The poor quality of recycled paper creates paper jams in machines.
You should have no problem finding quality, recycled paper to use in printers, fax machines copiers and other equipment. Whether you are using recycled paper or virgin paper the key is to pick the right paper for the task (e.g. copier paper for the copier).
Myth 6: The fibers in recycled paper create excess dust which can damage machinery.
This is not just a recycled paper issue. Whether you choose recycled paper or virgin paper, make sure to use high quality paper to reduce the incidence of dust.
Myth 7: Tree-free and chlorine-free recycled paper is the best.
This is an example of misused definitions. “Tree-free” refers to an alternative fiber source such as hemp, kenaf or cotton which is used to make the paper. “Chlorine-free” refers to the bleaching process. These terms are not directly related to the recycling process. Most recycled papers however, are classified as processed chlorine-free (PCF) which makes them environmentally friendly in this additional way.
Myth 8: Burning paper for energy is much better than recycling.
Paper can be recycled over and over multiple times. This saves trees, water, energy and reduces pollution, increasing the value of recycling.
Myth 9: Recycling paper damages the environment.
Ultimately, recycling conserves the environment by saving trees, water and energy. However, there is a sludge produced from recycling as in virgin paper production. Most sludge tests non-toxic, but toxic sludge can be properly disposed of.
Myth 10: Buying recycled paper doesn’t really help the environment.
This is probably the biggest myth of all. Paper that goes into landfills produces large amounts of methane gas. This contributes to global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that virgin paper decomposition in landfills is one of the biggest sources of methane. In addition the manufacture of recycled paper saves on energy, water, pollution and reduces pressures on our dwindling forests.
Tags: Article, Exploding, Myths, Paper, Recycled
Posted by on Apr 12, 2011 in
Essay Paper Recycled paper, sustainable forestry and bleaching
By Jay Risbridger, of the Green Stationery Company (http://www.greenstat.co.uk/storefront/evolution_index.html)
How is paper made?
Most paper is made on large machines using a revolving wire mesh called a deckle. A pulp solution of 5% fibres and 95% water is dropped onto the mesh and the water falls through leaving the entwined fibres behind. The fibre mat is dried as it is passed over large heated cylinders and forms into paper. As it runs down the machine, the paper surface is smoothed by adding starch and clay fillers. At the end of the deckle, the continuous sheet of paper is wound onto large rolls, later to be cut into sheets.
Pretty well any kind of fibre can be used for making paper, from silk to plastics. Traditionally, cotton rags were used to make high quality paper, but in the last hundred years rags have been replaced by softwoods – such as spruce, pine, fir, larch and hemlock – as the main fibre source, with the occasional hardwoods, like eucalyptus, aspen or birch. The trees are mechanically crushed to produce a rough quality paper fibre. More often, the wood is cooked with a chlorine or sulphite solution that breaks down the wood fibres by removing lignin, the natural glue that binds the fibres together. Chemically pulped paper is often called ‘woodfree’ because the lignin has been removed. Papers that still contain lignin will tend to yellow as they are exposed to sunlight, so ‘woodfree’ papers are preferred for all quality office and printing grades of paper.
Why use recycled paper?
As over 50% of all landfill waste is paper-based, the act of recycling turns a major waste product into a practical resource. To make recycled paper you do not have to crush or cook wood to get the fibres, as paper has already gone through this process the first time, so there is a large saving in energy and pollution. Used paper can simply be dropped into a vat of water and the fibres will be released for manufacturing new paper. Heavily-inked papers will have the ink skimmed off or dispersed away to make a greyer coloured recycled paper, whilst lightly-inked office papers and printers’ off cuts can produce whiter recycled papers. A single paper fibre can be recycled about five times before it becomes too short to make a strongly woven paper. Yes, in the grand scheme, virgin paper still needs to be harvested and produced to provide a recycled fibre source, but the ratio should be around 20% virgin to 80% recycled, not the other way round, as it is at present.
When calculating the energy consumption/ carbon footprint of recycled paper, some producers include in their calculations the energy spent in the collection of the used paper, to show recycled paper has a higher energy footprint than virgin grades. In reality, the collection of used paper happens anyway, as it is taken to landfill through local waste collections. Therefore, the energy used in collecting used paper is not an additional energy usage derived from the recycling process; instead, the energy used in waste paper collection and disposal should be added to the environmental cost of making virgin paper.
In general, we should all be wary of quantitative assertions that one action or another is more or less environmentally beneficial. All these calculations are open to manipulation by interested parties and reflect current social and market powers. Nature operates through sustainable cyclical processes and we should also make a qualitative judgement about supporting similar cyclical processes, like recycling.
Sustainable forestry
In response to the demand for environmentally responsible papers, virgin paper manufacturers have chosen to certify many of their papers as being ‘sourced from sustainable forests’. As the use of recycled fibre is the most logical environmental option, it would have been better for these manufacturers to start using more recycled pulp – but this would have required considerable investment in new machinery. It would also undermine the advantage that virgin pulp producers have in passing on the cost and responsibilities of disposal. In effect, local council collection services and recycling schemes are subsidising the Virgin paper manufacturers, and so increasing their profits.
The certification of European virgin papers as sustainably sourced changes nothing about how these papers are produced. The vast bulk of virgin paper fibres in Europe come from Scandinavian and North German softwood plantations. These forests are often owned by paper producers and have been a sustainable source of fibre for the European paper industry for over a hundred years. Ironically, even the sustainable forest certification schemes recognise that recycling is the best environmental solution for paper production, and have introduced recycled content papers under their forest certification labels to reflect the environmental value of recycling, even though they can never be sure what forest a recycled fibre comes from. One has to ask why the forestry certifiers are bothering to certify European paper products, when all it is achieving is undermining the demand for recycled papers?
Recently, there has been an increase in imported papers sourced from newly planted eucalyptus trees, prized for its high fibre yields. These are often certified with sustainable forestry and/or zero carbon footprint labels. Eucalyptus itself is a fast-growing, invasive tree originating in arid areas of Australia. Its speed of growth can be attributed to its large root network that draws up tremendous amounts of water and nutrients from the surrounding area, through transpiration. The result is that other vegetation is unable to grow near the tree, and the soil becomes rapidly degraded. Also, due to the volatile and highly combustible oils in the leaves, a densely packed plantation presents a serious fire risk.
There are active environmental campaigns in Portugal and South Africa where Eucalyptus is being grown on agricultural land for paper production. Not only are eucalypts damaging the land for short-term export gains; they also use up land much needed for essential food crops. An important lesson is to be learnt about environmental sustainability here, where we mustn’t just myopically focus on carbon dioxide emissions, but instead we need to think more holistically, and logically: just because a new tree is being planted, this does not mean the environment is benefiting – it depends what the tree is, and where it is planted.
Bleach and secondary whiteners
Many virgin fibre papers carry a ‘totally chlorine free’ (TCF) or ‘elemental chlorine free’ (ECF) environmental label. In paper manufacture, chlorine oxidants were used in the production of paper fibres derived from trees through the ‘woodfree’ process. In the past, many paper mills discharged effluents into rivers that were high in chlorine and sulphite pollutants, and this was the main environmental impact associated with paper production. But in the last twenty years, strict emission controls, and the realisation that the mills were just throwing away costly chemicals that could profitably be reclaimed, has virtually eliminated such pollution. There has also been a move away from sulphates and chlorine-based chemicals (linked to ozone layer destruction) towards more benign oxygen-based processes to extract the fibres. The vast majority of virgin paper is now chlorine free, and choosing a paper based purely on this criterion has very little impact on current paper production processes. Recycled paper cannot presently be classed as chlorine free, though, because you can never guarantee the source of all recycled fibres. Indeed, many recycled papers contain chlorine from used papers that were subjected to secondary bleaching when they were originally made.
Secondary bleaching is the use of bleaches and whiteners to improve the visual appearance of paper. Most recycled papers are not subject to secondary bleaching as it damages the fibres, and the maintenance of good fibre strength is essential to the creation of quality recycled paper. Recycled papers are generally either whiter or greyer depending on the source of the used paper itself. Recycled commercial waste and lightly inked office papers produce whiter recycled sheets. The lower grade waste sources – such as heavily printed magazines and newspapers – produce greyer recycled sheets. The availability of ‘high white’ recycled pulp is fairly limited and we would urge people to use lower grade post-consumer waste papers where possible, to make use of the mountain of waste paper sitting around. In practice though, greyer paper is much easier to read than high white papers that often contain optical brighteners (dyes that absorb light in the ultraviolet and violet region, and re-emit it in the blue region) that reflect light back into the eyes.
So why not lobby your office, business or organisation to use grey papers? Whiter papers aren’t better quality simply because of their colour. Indeed, once upon a time brown bread used to be regarded as poor quality, and white bread was seen as more refined and a premium product. Nowadays, we view white bread as cheap and inferior compared to quality wholegrain healthy brown breads. It’s just a question of perception, which can always be changed for the better.
We hope this information section has been useful to you as paper users and would always welcome comments and alterations from any customers or readers. Please read our ‘About Us’ page for more information on the issues concerning green and ethical businesses:
http://www.greenstat.co.uk/storefront/evolution_ContentPage.html?Content=1
Tags: Bleaching, Forestry, Paper, Recycled, Sustainable
Posted by on Jun 13, 2010 in
Custom Essay Writing Millions of Americans recycle paper at home, work and school. This number keeps increasing as people become more aware of the importance of recycling and conservation. Recycling paper products conserves natural resources, reduces the need for land filling or incineration, saves energy and prevents pollution. According to the Paper Industry Association Council, 56% of the paper consumed is recovered for recycling. Included in this number, 48% of office paper is recovered for recycling, and 73% of newspaper is recovered. This translates to almost 360 pounds for every person in the country. Recycled paper products include paperboard, tissue and paper towels, printing and writing paper, boxes, hydro-mulch, molded packaging, compost, kitty litter, and 1.5 million tons of construction products.
It is not just trees being saved by not using virgin wood pulp for products. The EPA states that recycling 1 ton of paper saves 1,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity in addition to 17 mature trees. Recycled paper generates 74% less air pollution and uses 54% less water vs. making new paper. Overall, it uses only 60% of the energy it would take to make paper from virgin wood pulp.
Recycling numbers can increase by encouraging away from home collection. The EPA has set up an initiative called Recycle on the Go as part of its Resource Conservation Challenge. Its goal is to encourage recycling in public places. Their objective is to increase the amount of paper waste collected for recycling, and promote a culture of recycling by making it convenient, available and cost effective.
You should choose a company which is socially responsible company dedicated to a greener future. In addition to an extensive list of environmentally sound office products, the company should be dedicated to selling only recycled and tree-free papers. To further conserve, they reuse shipping cartons and pad them with recyclable paper, never polystyrene foam.
Tags: about, Facts, Paper, Products, Recycled, Recycling
Posted by on Jun 12, 2010 in
Custom Essay Writing Have you ever looked at a package of recycled office paper and wondered how it can look so clean and crisp? Most people think recycled office paper has to be tan or gray; but fortunately great strides in the recycling industry have made remarkable advances in producing high quality, recycled content paper products.
To begin recycling paper, the wastepaper must be free of contaminants such as food, plastic and metal. Once this clean paper is separated at a recycling center, it is tightly bundled in a bailer and taken to a paper mill to be made into new products. Different grades of recovered paper are used to make various types of recycled paper products like tissue & towel products, corrugated paper, and printing and writing papers. Recovered papers move through a range of steps. First, it is mixed in the Pulper with water and chemicals. The paper is chopped and heated and broken down into fibers. The result is a mixture of mushy pulp. Next the pulp moves onto the screening phase.
During this procedure pulp is pushed through screens to eliminate bits of plastic and glue. The pulp is further cleaned through another step called the spinning process which separates out the remaining contaminants such as staples. Once the paper is cleaned, it goes through a de-inking process to eliminate any ink or sticky glues from the pulp. Color stripping removes dye from colored paper and bleaching is what makes recycled office paper so white. Most recycled papers, unlike their virgin paper counterparts, are whitened with Hydrogen Peroxide or an Oxygenation process—not chlorine. After all of this, the pulp is ready for the paper machine. It can either be used alone to create recycled content paper or blended with alternative fibers such as hemp, kenaf, cotton or other fibers to create tree-free papers. It may also be blended with virgin paper fibers to create a partial recycled content paper. After being blended with water, the pulp is sprayed onto screens and runs through a series of press rollers, followed by heated rollers to dry the paper. The finished paper is wound onto giant rolls, then cut down to smaller rolls or sheets. It is finally shipped to converting plants to be made into different paper products, including bright white recycled office paper
Because paper fibers can be recycled six to twelve times, it is advantageous for it to be collected and re-made into paper again! Approximately 80% of paper mills in the United States use some recovered fiber even in their production of new paper and paper products. So next time you have a choice of which paper to purchase reach for the recycled office paper, in particular the 100% post-consumer paper; and do your part to save the environment.
Tags: Paper, Recycled