When you recycle one page of typical photocopy or computer paper, what fraction of a page is ultimately (re)generated. I assume it’s less than one. I’m curious to see just how much less. 0.5? 0.1?
(And, I know, at least I think I know, that there are energy savings to be had. These might well dwarf the saving of paper per se).
Thanks!
Of paper placed into the recycling process, pretty darned close to 100% of that page is used.
What you are missing is that the end result paper also contains a percentage of fresh raw materials. This is higly dependant on how the paper will be used. New laser printer paper with recycled content will contain a very small percentage of post consumer recycled paper. Less than 10%, from what I’ve seen.
Paper for holding food products will have even less if any.
Cardboard, toilet paper, paper towels, and industrial use papers will have the highest content, but rarely more than 30%.
Right. That’s what I was looking for. If I’m interpreting what you said correctly, no more than 0.3 of a page is (re)generated for each page that’s put into the system.
Thanks.
No, I think you are not understanding that correctly.
Pretty much 100% of a page of computer paper that you recycle is recycled into something. But only a small amount of it goes back into another sheet of computer paper.
Used computer paper is contaminated with ink/toner, fingerprint smudges, etc., and it comes out a greyish color. To make it usable again as bright white computer/copier paper takes cleaning & bleaching processes, which are more expensive than just starting with new wood pulp. So the manufacturers can only put about 10-12% of such recycled paper into making a new sheet of paper.
When making paper towels or toilet paper, they can use a bit more, up to 20 or 25%. Things that don’t have to be white, like cardboard, industrial papers, brown wrapping paper, can use more recycled content, up to about 30%. They could actually use more, but recycled paper also contains shorter fibers, and thus has less strength than paper from new wood pulp. They have to worry about the tearing strength of the resulting paper, too.
So none of the paper you recycle is wasted. It’s all recycled into some kind of paper or cardboard product. But not back into the same kind of paper.
This is true of most recycling. It is reused, but for less demanding uses. Like rubber tires are recycled, and made into rubber shreds for playgrounds, footing for tracks & arenas, etc. – but very little goes back into new tires. The main exception is metals, like aluminum cans and copper wire – they are melted down & purified, and go back into the manufacturing process just like newly mined aluminum or copper.
Understood. But …
Assume total production of all paper types and their relative quantities doesn’t change going forward. That production consists of 70-90% new pulp & 30-10% post-consumer recycled materials depending on what grade is being produced.
If we were to collectively get serious about trying to recycle a greater fraction of all paper products, it’d be pretty easy to get to a place where the supply of recycled materials exceeds demand.
It *might *be true that office paper is such a small percentage of the total that we could recycle 100% of it and still find a use for all of it in lesser papers. I don’t know the stats.
But the more the distribution of total production tonnage is skewed towards the higher quality papers, the less of each year’s production can be recycled.
*If *office paper represented, say, 90% of all paper, *and *we tried to recycle 100% of it, *then *we’d be unable to use more than ~1/5th of the recycled materials to make new paper of any grade. The rest would have to become landfill or cattle feed or ???
I suspect the OPs real question is somethng like “where on that supply / demand curve for recycled office paper are we?”
Many of the uses of recycled paper are terminal; toilet paper and paper towels aren’t recyclable after their normal uses (cough), along with dirty or greasy paper in general. So there is constant loss from the system.
Recycled paper has market value; clean (ie, ink or toner but no grease or dirt) white office paper was selling for ~$50 a ton in 2008 (it’s gone way down now, as mills in China cut down on cardboard production due to falling demand from manufacturers that need fewer boxes as sales of consumer goods drop). This suggests that there is sufficient demand for used paper, at least when the economy is good.