How 100% Recycled Paper is Made
Paper isn’t garbage. It isn’t trash. To members of the Paper Recycling Coalition, it is the raw material that runs our industry.
When you recycle paper, we turn it into sustainable packaging that’s used in all kinds consumer and industrial products. See of the brand names using 100% recycled paperboard.
In our mills making 100% recycled paper, no trees are used. Instead, we make our pulp by mixing the paper you recycled at home and work with water. Like an extremely large blender, rotating fins in the pulper reduce the paper to individual fibers, producing a paper slurry.
That paper pulp is then washed and refined. At this stage, contaminants like small pieces of glass, staples, plastic, and any other non-fiber materials that were mixed in with paper are removed.
A small amount of recovered fiber, about 2%, is lost during the papermaking process and becomes compost, landfill cover, or feedstock for aerobic or anaerobic water treatment systems.
The clean paper slurry is then moved through the paper machine on a series of screens. As the pulp travels, water drains away from the slurry. The remaining paper fibers are pressed with rollers and dried to form large sheets of paper. Because our products are used by some of the most demanding companies in the world, we assure the highest quality. Computerized sensors and state-of-the-art control equipment monitor each stage of the process to ensure that the paper meets or exceeds all standards, including the thickness and smoothness requirements of the consumer. As the paper exits the machine, it is either stacked in large sheets or wound into large rolls like those pictured above.
The 100% recycled paper is sent to a converting facility where it is transformed into a box, core or tube, fiber can, folding carton, overnight envelope, or other consumer or industrial product. Shortly thereafter, it’s back on its way into your home or office, where we hope you will recycle it again!
Please click the attached link to take a look at the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0ASgPwgQlY