ISSUE: HOW DO YOU FIT
IN THE RECYCLABILITY EQUATION?

DEINKING – A CRITICAL STEP IN RECYCLABILITY

IF RECOVERED FIBERS are used to manufacture certain grades of paper, the printing inks have to be removed to increase the whiteness and purity. During this stage the ink is removed from the fiber in a flotation process where air is blown into the solution. The ink adheres to bubbles of air and rises to the surface from where it is separated.

Deinking Schematic

What about digital inks?

OVER TIME, GREAT STRIDES HAVE BEEN MADE in removing digital colorants, especially toners, from office papers. Currently digitally-imaged papers make up only a tiny fraction – about 5% – of today’s overall paper waste stream, even when all of the printed paper from the many companies who recycle their office wastepaper is included in the calculation. The other 95% consists of pages printed using analog technologies such as lithography, flexography and gravure.

RECYCLING HAS ITS NATURAL LIMITS

RECOVERED PAPER cannot be used indefinitely and is not suitable for all grades. Paper recycling needs to be continuously balanced with the use of new fiber for strength and quality, as well as to balance the supply of fiber with demand. As global paper production grows, recovered fibers alone are not enough – for example, the recovered paper market in China alone is now over 60 million tons per year and is projected to be nearly 90 million tons by 2014. Demand isn’t the only thing that makes recovered fiber costly. It often costs more to transport recovered fiber to the mill, because it must be shipped, in some cases, up to five times farther than new fiber. That longer distance could also result in significantly higher CO2 emissions.

International Paper quote

down to earth insight

Renewing your resources is just as important as reusing your products. Paper lets you do both. By recycling, we recover and reuse the natural wood fibers. By using new fibers, we help ensure that U.S. forests are managed responsibly and that new forests are planted. The private landowners who supply more than 90% of the wood harvested in the U.S. plant about four million trees each day.

See more Down to Earth Insights.