How do we recycle paper & what you can do to help?

How Paper is Recycled??!

1* First, the waste paper must be collected. One of the most expensive parts of recycling is the collection, sorting, and transportation of waste paper.

2* The next step is repulping. The bales of sorted waste paper are soaked in large vats, where they disintegrate into fibers.

3* Chemicals are added at this point so that, when ink particles start to separate from the paper, they can't reattach themselves to the pulp.

To remove the ink, the pulp is fed into a deinking system.

*First, a series of increasingly fine screens remove extraneous material (known as "trash"), coatings and additives, and extremely small contaminants such as fillers and loose ink particles.

*The screened pulp is sent through several cleaning stages, where heat, chemicals, and mechanical action may be used to loosen ink particles.

*Finally, the pulp mixture enters a flotation device, where calcium soap and other chemicals are added. Air bubbles in the mixture float the remaining ink to the surface, where it is skimmed away.

4* The deinked pulp is now sent to the stock preparation area, where it is treated and loaded into the headbox of a paper machine. From this point, the pulp is treated just the same as if it had been freshly made from wood chips rather than recycled.

5* At the end of the recycling process, a new paper product has been produced from material that might otherwise have been dumped in a landfill. Recycling is an important way for consumers and papermakers to work together for a cleaner environment.

Can Paper Continue To Be Recycled?

Each time paper is recycled, the fiber length decreases, which impacts its strength. It is estimated that paper has approximately seven generations, meaning it can be recycled up to seven times.

Because paper is made from a renewable resource, introducing new, or “virgin” fiber into the process is a logical answer. Today approximately 80 percent of the nation’s paper mills use some recovered fiber in the production of new paper and paperboard products.

Further, the U.S. forest products industry plants an average of 1.7 million trees every day—five new trees for every tree harvested. Thanks to the responsible forestry practices of U.S. companies, the amount of standing timber in U.S. forests has increased by nearly 40 percent over the past half-century and by 10 million acres since 1990. Since 1993 the amount of paper being reprocessed has exceeded the amount that is disposed.

Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/28472/paperrecycle.htm

Source: http://earth911.com/recycling/paper/how-is-paper-recycled/