FAQ

Paper Manufacturing

Q: How is wood made into paper?

A: In the papermaking process, wood is first chipped into small pieces. Then water and heat, and sometimes chemicals, are added to separate the wood into individual fibers. The fiber is mixed with lots of water (and often recycled fiber), and then this pulp slurry is sprayed onto a huge flat wire screen which is moving very quickly through the paper machine. Water drains out, and the fibers bond together. The web of paper is pressed between rolls which squeeze out more water and press it to make a smooth surface. Heated rollers then dry the paper, and the paper is slit into smaller rolls, and sometimes into sheets, and removed from the paper machine.

Q: Does most of the paper manufactured in the U.S. come from whole trees?

A: No. Over half of the raw material used to make paper in the U.S. comes from recovered paper and the wood waste (such as wood chips and sawdust) left behind from lumber manufacturing.

Q: What is paperboard?

A: Paperboard is the stiff type of paper often referred to as “cardboard.” Paperboard is used in food packaging (such as cereal boxes), and is used to make many other types of products such as shoe boxes, video game boxes, book covers, etc.

Paper Recycling

Q: How do paper recyclers take the ink out of paper?

A: During the paper recycling process, ink is removed from paper in a process called deinking (de-inking). After the recovered paper is chopped up (or pulped), and mixed with water to make a pulp slurry, it is put through a series of washing and/or flotation deinking processes in which water and/or soap-like chemicals called surfactants remove the ink from the paper.

Q: What happens to the ink that’s removed?

A: Along with clay, short fibers, and other materials removed during the deinking process, ink that is removed from recycled pulp can be burned to generate energy to run the mill, or sold to make such useful materials as compost or gravel for roads.

Q: How many times can a piece of paper be recycled?

A: A single piece of paper may contain new fibers as well as fibers which have already been recycled once, twice, or several times. Papermaking fibers can typically be recycled 5-7 times before they become too short to be recycled again.

Q: Why does paper need to be sorted before it’s recycled?

A: Successful recycling requires clean recovered paper which is free of contaminants such as food, plastic, metal, and other trash. Contaminated paper can introduce impurities and bacteria into the recycling process. Furthermore, different grades of paper – corrugated boxes, newspapers, and office paper – must be kept separate, because the different grades of recovered paper are used to make particular types of recycled paper products.

Q: Will recycling paper help save the tropical rain forests?

A: The trees that grow in the tropical rain forests are rarely harvested to make paper. The deforestation occurring in the tropical rain forests is mainly due to population pressure. In the world’s under-developed nations, more than 90 percent of the deforestation occurs because of the demand for increased agricultural land and/or firewood.

Trees and Forests

Q: Why do leaves change color in the fall?

A: Leaves contain pigments of various colors all through the year, but most of the year the yellows and oranges are masked by great amounts of green coloring from the abundance of chlorophyll contained in the leaves. In the fall, when the temperatures change and the length of daylight decreases, leaves stop their food-making process, and their chlorophyll, now unused, begins to break down. The green color disappears, and the yellows and oranges already present in the leaves become visible. At the same time, other chemical changes occur within the leaves which cause red pigments to develop.

Q: Are we running out of trees in the U.S.?

A: No; in fact, there are more trees in the U.S. today than there were 70 years ago.

Q: What is the difference between a national forest and a national park?

A: There is a big difference between the two. By law, national forests are working forests, set up by the U.S. Congress in the late 1800s to provide the nation with a continuous source of raw materials for wood products. At the same time, they are also used to provide wildlife habitat and for recreation. By contrast, national parks, like Yellowstone, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, and Yosemite, are intentionally set aside for non-commercial uses (such as recreation) and are not managed for resource production.

Q: How many trees are planted each year in the U.S.?

A: Over 2 ½ billion trees are planted in the U.S. each year. The forest community plants over 1 ½ billion of these trees; that’s an average of 4 million new trees planted every day by the forest community. Millions more trees regrow from seeds and sprout naturally.

Q: Are we cutting down more trees in the U.S. than we’re planting?

A: No. In fact, forest growth has exceeded harvests since the 1940s.

Q: What makes a forest “old growth”?

A: Old growth is generally defined as trees 200 years of age or older. There are 13.2 million acres of old growth in the U.S. today. The vast majority of these trees will remain in their natural condition and will never be harvested due to legal and regulatory prohibitions on logging, road building, and even fire fighting.

Q: What percentage of the world’s wood is used each year to make paper?

A: Only about 17% of the 3.3 billion cubic meters of wood consumed worldwide each year is for papermaking, and much of this wood is in the form of wood chips and other residue left behind from sawmill operations. Over half of the wood harvested in the world is used for fuel, mostly for cooking and domestic heating.

Q: Does cutting down trees for papermaking lead to deforestation?

A: No. Deforestation is the permanent clearing of trees for purposes such as creating farmland and pasture land, for commercial and residential development, or for any other use for which trees are cut and not allowed to grow back. Paper companies and others in the forest products industry are actively reforesting. They not only allow trees to grow back, they actually encourage new growth by replanting and caring for new trees, and by creating forest land in areas where it previously did not exist. Unfortunately, deforestation is occurring in many parts of the world, especially in the tropics. This deforestation is mainly due to population pressure. In most of these cases, forests are cut down and burned for domestic fuel (heating homes and cooking) or to clear land for farming.

Q: How much of a harvested tree is actually used? Is any part wasted?

A: The forest products industry has found uses for almost every part of a tree, so virtually all of the tree is used. For instance, lumber and building products can be made from the trunk, primarily from large trees whose diameters are greater than 8″. The remaining wood is recovered in the form of trimmings and wood chips, and is used to make paper. The natural chemicals within the wood chips are recovered and made into useful products such as turpentine, plastics, food flavorings, and photographic film. The bark of the tree is ground or chipped to make garden mulch, or it can be burned in a furnace to generate energy to run a paper mill. Leaves, needles, and small branches are generally left in the forest to replenish the soil by adding valuable organic matter. This also helps to hold water and prevent excessive run-off on the forest floor.

Paper Industry Statistics

Q: How much paper do Americans use in a year?

A: Every year, Americans use more than 90 million short tons of paper and paperboard. That’s an average of 700 pounds of paper products per person each year. Every year in America, more than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published.

Q: How many paper mills are there in the United States? In the world?

A: The U.S. is the world’s leading producer of paper and paperboard, with over 500 mills in operation. Worldwide, there are approximately 10,000 paper and paperboard mills in operation.

Q: How much paper and paperboard is made in the U.S.? Worldwide?

A: Worldwide, about 300 million metric tons of paper and paperboard are produced each year. The U.S. alone produces about 87 million metric tons of paper and paperboard, representing nearly one-third of the world’s total production.

Paper History

Q: When was paper invented?

A: According to tradition, paper was invented in 105 A.D. by a Chinese court official named Ts’ai Lun. But recent evidence suggests that the Chinese may have been making paper from old fishing nets and other materials as early as 200 B.C.

Q: When was paper first made in the U.S.?

A: The first paper mill in the U.S. colonies was established in 1690 by William Rittenhouse, a papermaker, William Bradford, a printer, and two wealthy Philadelphia businessmen. The Rittenhouse Mill was built near Germantown, Pennsylvania. Although the mill itself no longer exists, you can still visit the historic site on which the mill was located.

Q: How much plastic is recycled?

A: The recycling of plastics continued to grow in 1997. More than 1.3 billion pounds of post-consumer plastics packaging were recycled in the United States.

• 649 million pounds of PET bottles were recycled in 1997-an increase of more than 18 million pounds compared to 1996!
• HDPE bottle recycling increased 7 percent in 1997 to 704 million pounds.2
• All plastic bottles were recycled at a rate of 24 percent in 1997.2
• 36 percent of plastic soft drink bottles were recycled in 1997.2

Q: How does plastic recycling work?

A: Successful recovery of plastic — like any material — requires an infrastructure that can get plastics from the consumer and back into use as new products. The plastics recycling infrastructure has four parts:

Collection-Rather than being thrown away, plastics (primarily PETand HDPE) are collected for recycling. Curbside collection with other materials and drop-off at recycling centers are common plastics collection methods.

Handling-Plastics from collection programs are sorted to increase their value and compacted to reduce shipping costs.

Reclamation-In conventional recycling, sorted plastics are chopped, washed and converted into flakes or pellets that are then processed into new products. Advanced recycling technologies (see “What are advanced recycling technologies ?”) can take mixed plastics back to their original building blocks (monomers or petroleum feedstocks). These can then be recycled into a number of different products, including new plastics.

End-use-Reclaimed plastic pellets or flakes-or petroleum feedstocks-are used to manufacture new products.

Q: How many communities collect plastic for recycling?

A: Following an extensive nationwide survey in 1997, the American Plastics Council (APC) estimated that roughly one-half of all U.S. communities — nearly 19,400 — are collecting plastics for recycling, primarily PET and HDPE. Roughly 7,400 communities collect plastics at the curb, and approximately 12,000 communities collect plastics through drop-off centers. In addition, thousands of grocery stores in the United States accept plastic bags for recycling into new trash can liners and other products. The chart below shows how new community collection programs have increased in past years.3,4

Q: Can some plastics from durable goods be recycled?

A: Yes. A primary challenge is collecting post-consumer plastics from durable goods in quantities of sufficient quality that make recycycing cost-effective.

The Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP), a consortium formed by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, has opened a joint research center called the Vehicle Recycling Development Center (VRDC) to develop automotive recycling technology. The VRP has a collaborative agreement with APC to develop technology to recover and recycle plastics from scrapped vehicles’ bumpers, instrument panels, seats and interior trim.

At wTe Corporation, a research and development facility in Dorchester, Mass., APC conducted research to improve recovery of plastics from durable products. The facility was designed to take plastic items with foreign material contamination, such as metals or fabric coverings, and generate a clean plastic stream.

MBA Polymers, Richmond, CA, includes an “advanced plastics recycling line” that is developing and demonstrating new technologies for durables recycling. These include technology for plastics identification and sorting, and improving the quality and reducing the costs of recovering plastics from durable goods. Currently, APC and others are conducting research to evaluate recovery of telephones, automotive parts, computer housings, refrigerator doors and cabinet liners.

Q: How many plastics recyclers are there?

A: A 1998 study identified 1,792 businesses that handle and/or reclaim (sort, process and/or produce) post-consumer plastics. Information about these businesses has been compiled into a special handlers/ reclaimers database. Community recycling representatives can use the database to locate potential markets for their collected materials by calling APC’s plastics information line at 1-800-2-HELP-90.5

Q: Why is sorting so important in plastic recycling?

A: There are different types of plastics, just as there are different types of metal, paper and glass. Steel and aluminum have to be separated before recycling, different colors of glass must be sorted and white office paper must be separated from newspapers and paperboard boxes. Each of the six common packaging plastics has performance characteristics that make it best suited for specific applications (see “Why do we need different kinds of plastics?”). Purchasers of recycled resins want to be sure that these properties are retained, so handlers sort plastics by resin type to command the highest market value.

Q: What can I recycle?

A: Since all community-recycling programs are basically independent of one another , what you can recycle depends on where you live. To find out what plastics recycling opportunities are available in your area, check with your county or town department of public works, look under “Recycling” in the Yellow pages, or contact your local hauler. The most common plastic resins collected at curbside are PET and HDPE, often used in soft drink bottles and milk, juice and water containers respectively. Not all types of plastics are generally recycled, and recycling facilities may not be available in some areas.

Q: What kinds of products are made with recycled plastics?

A: The variety of products made with recycled plastics is growing. Here are just a few examples: Recycled PET can be used in producing deli and bakery trays, carpets, clothing and textiles.

Recycled HDPE can become bottles for laundry produ cts, recycling bins, agricultural pipe, bags, motor oil bottles, decking and marine pilings.

Recycled vinyl can become playground equipment, film and airbubble cushioning.

Recycled LDPE can be used to manufacture bags, shrink film and compost bins.

Recycled PP can be used in automobile parts, carpets, battery casings, textiles, industrial fibers and films used for packaging products such as candy.

Recycled PS can be used in products including office accessories, video cassettes and cases.To help public and private sector buyers identify products made with recycled plastic, APC publishes “The Recycled Plastic Products Source Book” that lists more than 1,400 products.APC also publishes a consumer’s guide to recycled products. “Shop Recycled!” lists more than 240 commonly used consumer items that are either made from or packaged with recycled plastics. Single copies of both guides can be obtained at no charge by calling APC’s plastics information line at 1-800-2-HELP-90, or visit the Shop Recycled Mall at our website, www.plastics.org. 6

Q: Can plastic be recycled back into food contact applications?

A: Today, some recycled plastics are used in food and beverage containers. Technical and economic barriers currently limit widespread use of recycled plastic packaging in direct contact with food.

Q: What are advanced recycling technologies?

A: The term advanced recycling describes a family of plastics recycling processes that yield a variety of versatile end products. Sometimes the term feedstock recycling or chemical recycling is used. These end products can be the building blocks from which plastics are made. By unlinking or unzipping plastics (polymers) to their original molecular components, recyclers can produce monomers or a petroleum product that can be made into monomers (the basic units from which plastics are made) or a number of other petroleum-based products. These developmental processes signal a significant technical breakthrough in plastics recycling technology because the products are identical to virgin feedstocks and monomers used to produce new plastics. Advanced recycling technologies are being researched to augment existing conventional mechanical systems as part of an integrated approach. They are designed to increase the volume of post-consumer plastics diverted from the waste stream and expand the variety of plastics that are recycled into new and useful products.7

Q: What resources are available to help increase sustainable recycling?

A: Through organizations such as APC, the plastics industry is developing technologies to collect, sort and reclaim plastics more economically, broadening its focus to include durable products and commercial streams, researching new applications and end-markets for recycled plastics, and promoting existing markets through publications such as “The Recycled Plastic Products Source Book” and “Shop Recycled!” The American Plastics Council offers the following services and resources:

Toll-Free Information Line — Community officials and recyclers can get the technical information they need by calling 1-800-2-HELP-90. Information Specialists can access APC’s databases listing more than 1,700 plastics handlers and reclaimers to match supply with demand for post-consumer plastics.

Technical Research Programs — The state of the art in plastics recycling is constantly evolving. APC works to hasten this evolution, pursuing a wide range of technical solutions that can add greater automation and operating efficiency to each step of the plastics recycling infrastructure, from collection to end-markets. The findings from these research programs have resulted in a series of technical manuals to help advance plastics recycling across the country. How to Collect Plastics for Recycling — A comprehensive technical manual to assist recycling professionals in improving the efficiency of existing collection efforts or designing programs from the outset. An accompanying video (23-minutes) shows detailed equipment configuration and collection strategies tested in APC’s Model City demonstrations. Sorting Plastic Bottles for Recycling — A companion to “How to Collect Plastics for Recycling.” This guide assists Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) operators in improving the efficiency of sorting and recovering plastic containers collected from the residential and commercial recyclables streams.

How Can You Get More of These Into This? — A motivational tool kit designed to assist recyclers in the development and execution of a public service campaign; includes a how-to booklet, trade press advertisements, a series of broadcast-ready radio public service announcements and ready-to-print feature stories for newspapers. (produced jointly with the Association of Postconsumer Plastics Recyclers.)

Stretch Wrap Recycling: A How-To Guide — A guide that takes recyclers step-by-step through the process of design and implementation of a stretch wrap recovery program.

Waste Reduction Strategies for Rural Communities — A report that provides rural waste management officials with information on effcient waste management, jointly produced by APC and the Tennessee valley Authority (TVA).

Educational Assistance –Extensive research has determined the best means of ensuring proper consumer participation in recycling programs and has resulted in two publications available free of charge from APC: ‘Educating your community About Plastics Recycling: A Do-It-Yourself Kit” and “Perfecting the Plastics Drop-Off.” We also have television public service announcements ready for use in your community to help boost public participation in plastics recycling.