Scrap Paper
Newsprint/Paper/Paperboard Recycling: Paper products are the single biggest component of the municipal solid waste stream, making up 38.1 percent of the material landfilled in the United States. Effective paper recycling efforts can help conserve landfill space and natural resources and preserve biological diversity by reducing the call to harvest timber from wild areas.
Paper, cardboard and paperboard are widely recycled. Nearly 42 percent of the 87.9 million tons of paper discarded in 1999 was recovered for recycling. Only nonferrous metals other than aluminum, at 66.9 percent, and yard waste (45.3 percent) have higher recovery rates.
Recovery of corrugated cardboard leads paper’s overall recycling rate. It is so profitable to recycle that 73 percent of corrugated cardboard discards are recovered each year in the United States. Old newspapers are also widely recycled. Almost 69 percent of all newspapers discarded in 1998 was recovered. The newspaper recycling rate has climbed since newspaper publishers and newsprint makers made using recycled fibers in newsprint production a priority in 1988.
The quality of paper fibers degrades with repeated recycling, so there is a separate market for recycled white office paper. White office paper is higher quality paper such as copy and writing paper, green-bar and multi-stripe computer printout and white envelopes without plastic windows or labels. It is best for incorporating into new white office paper products, but recycling is somewhat suppressed. According to the Recycled Paper Coalition, less than 20 percent of office wastepaper generated in the United States is recovered.
Markets for recycled paper
New technology and improved markets have made paper recycling much easier over the years. No longer must you remove staples and other metal fasteners that a good magnet can pick up. You no longer have to pull glossy ads and magazines from the recycling stream.
Rittman Paperboard in northeastern Ohio, a subsidiary of the world’s largest maker of recycled paperboard and packaging products, has developed recycling technology that allows them to accept food-waste contaminated paper, such as old pizza boxes.
Mixed paper and paperboard is recycled into new packaging products, as well as paper towel and tissues, construction paper, cellulose insulation and bedding for farm animals. Canada is a notable importer of recycled U.S. paper, and there are other, cyclical export markets. A failure of the cotton crop in China in the mid-1990s, for instance, contributed to an enormous demand for recycled paper and PET, which can be used to make polyester. Asia and Europe provide growing and ongoing export markets as well.
Old newspapers and other recycled newsprint often ends up in the mixed paper bin, but there is a strong market in Ohio for newsprint by itself. Helped by several paper mills around the state, Ohio newspapers contain, on average, more than 40 percent recycled paper. The national average is just over 28 percent. To reduce the amount of paper you recycle, try these waste-saving ideas:
• Use both sides of each piece of paper.
• Circulate memos or use e-mail and bulletin boards instead of distributing individual copies of memos.
• Centralized filing or electronic filing can also cut paper waste. In 2000, the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation cut almost $700,000 in annual expenses by switching to an electronic filing system.
• Purchase recycled paper and avoid colored paper, which is doomed to lower-priced mixed paper markets.
• Use washable cups, dishes and towels instead of paper.
Conservation benefits of paper recycling
• Every ton of recycled paper:
— Conserves the equivalent of 17 trees worth of lumber
— Saves 7,000 gallons of water
— Cuts pollution 95 percent
— Saves 11 barrels – 462 gallons – of oil
— Saves more than three cubic yards of landfill space.
• From residential and commercial recycling alone in the United States in 1999, paper recycling conserved nearly 624 million trees, 256.9 billion gallons of water, almost 17 billion gallons of oil, 110 million cubic yards of landfill space and prevented 2.2 billion pounds of air pollution.
• Recycled paper cannot completely replace paper made from new wood pulp, but reducing the consumption of trees has other environmental benefits. Replanting trees does not restore the biological diversity lost when a forest is cut down. Logging can accelerate soil erosion and trees help reduce the overabundance of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by absorbing carbon.
• The paper recycling consulting firm Moore & Associates estimates that an extra 350,000 tons of recycled paper could be available each year if the 20 least efficient metropolitan recycling programs in the United States came up to the current industry average.
17.04.2007. 08:57
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