The recycling effort has been in full swing for some time now, but it is currently experiencing an all-time high in popularity. Cities and counties operate recycling drives, and some municipalities offer rebates on refuse collection fees to citizens who recycle. One of the benefits of recycling is the lessened strain on landfills and less pollution. Another is that new products are manufactured from recycled materials. Paper is especially useful, and there several ways recycled paper can be put to use.
Paper is a material that is often recycled into products that are very similar to the original model. Consider office document paper. It is made from a high grade stock that is used for printing paper, résumés, and the like. New office paper is made from these pieces because the fibers that comprise it are sturdy enough to handle multiple recycles. Newly manufactured sheets, however, obtain a darker shade than the original. Bleaching takes care of this, but it costs money to do so; therefore, recycled office paper is frequently used to make colored printing sheets. The colored dye covers up the dark shade and it ceases to be a problem.
Paper fibers wear down with each successive recycle, so it is only possible to create more of the same grade at best. More often, recovered paper is used to make lesser grade stock in its next form. Newsprint, however, is able to become more of the same because it is already of a grade low enough that additional newsprint is perfectly acceptable. Because this type of paper is not heavy grade to begin with, it is expected that subsequent forms are light as well. Other low grade paper products that fall into this category are napkins, tissues, and coffee filters.
Packaging materials such as cardboard are also made from low grade paper. Due to this, paper used in boxing often takes on the same form in subsequent recycling. Cardboard is very low grade paper, making it perfect for recycling into more cardboard products such as boxes. Boxes experience frequent handling and are meant to store objects. They aren’t necessarily meant to look pretty, so the resultant darker shade of recycled paper is unimportant. Manufacturing flaws are also not an issue if the box is meant to simply move freight from place to place. Cereal boxes are examples of cardboard that actually will be put on display, but the printing plastered all over the box hides dark shades and textual inconsistencies.
Recycling is more popular than ever. The Paper Industry Association Council has reported that as recently as 2008, 57.4% of the paper consumed in the United States was used for recycling. It is easy to see how so many products are made from recycled paper.
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