Paper recycling is a good thing but why is it also a bad thing?

Question

Paper recycling is a good thing but why is it also a bad thing?

Answer 1

I've been processing recycled fibers for over 2 decades, so I have some thoughts.

First, the chemicals are not harmful!  Peroxide is the bleach of choice, and the by-products of that are oxygen and water.

The energy costs for recycling are slightly higher than virgin fiber.  If you are growing trees as a renewable resource, than that might off set any savings from recycling.

The biggest issue with recycling is the waste.  About  10-12% of paper is minerals  to make the paper opaque.  Another 2-4% of the paper is starch to prevent ink from bleading into adjoining fibers.  There are a few more percentage points of fiber fragments that are lost in the deinking process.

All of this leads to a category called yield - how much recycled fiber you can get out of a set amount of waste paper.  The magic number that everyone is trying to reach for white waste paper is 72% - that means that out of 100 lb of waste paper, you have 72 lb of fiber.  The remainder of that is waste and must be disposed of.

Recycling fiber is a wet process, hence the waste products are wet.  The dryest you can get fibers by squeezing is about 48% - after that, you have to start adding heat and that is expensive.  So, if you have 28 lb of waste that is about 45% solids, you have 62 lb of waste.  If you add in a few lb of activated sludge (the bugs that eat the starch in secondary treatment), you end up with about 70 lb of sludge for every 100 lb of paper recycled.  If you landfill that, you have gained virtually nothing.

The trick is to do something clever with the waste sludge, and there are too few people doing that now.  I have, and it was pretty satisfying

Answer 2

can't think of any reason

Answer 3

Recycling itself uses energy...... the key is just to use less

Answer 4

Uses a lot of chemicals (bleach, etc) that are very hazardous to the environment and have to be disposed of somehow.