Total Recycled Content %?

Question

I need to know how to get the Total % of recycled material in a product. If a product is 20% Pre-Consumer Waste and 20% Post-Consumer Waste is it 20% or 40% Total Recycled Material? I mean since the original 20% is recycled again it should be 20% Total right? Please help!

Answer 1

No, it's 40%.  

Pre-consumer means recycled by industry, post-consumer means recycled by consumers.  It's not recycled "again".

Answer 2

Total recycled content would be 40% - but part of what you're struggling with is the definition of "recycling."

If a paper company has scrap paper as a waste product from their process, and they send that waste to a cardboard company who uses it to make cardboard - is that recycling?

If a glass container company takes any bottles that they make that are not quite perfect, and melts them down to make new bottles, is that recycling?

Both of those would be examples of "Pre-Consumer" Waste - because the recycling happened before the product was purchased by the consumer.  

In your example, which might be from a paper company, 20% of the ingredients used in the paper were recycled from paper that people (consumers) had already used, 20% were from paper that was recycled directly from factory waste, and 60% was from virgin paper stock.

Great question.