Introduction To Recycling Fiber Paper

Paper is one of the extremely versatile substances that is available in our homes and offices in multiple ways. Be it the kitchen roll, the endless delivery boxes or every paper back you bought since you were thirteen. We use a lot of paper, we trust our food and grocery with it, and use it for endless art and craft too. 

The fact that most of the paper products we know can be recycled makes you wonder why any paper waste should end up in landfills causing environmental pollution. And are you aware that paper is one of the materials that is known solely for its recycling potential? 

At ThunderBolt paper, we love to talk about everything paper, and recycling paper is one of the most important topics of all times. One of the well-known and effective ways of reducing our environmental footprint is by reusing and recycling our waste, including paper. 

Let us start by knowing how we can do our bit in environment conservation by knowing the basics of how paper is made to the needs of recycling paper. 

How paper is made

From the first time that paper was ever made, a lot of materials remain the same till date. Ingredients such as cotton flax wood wheat straw rags for bamboo have been used as the raw material for or making the fiber required to make paper. 

There are three types of paper mills: 

Pulp based mills

20 mils make a pulp of cellulose fibers and water to be used as the basic ingredient of all paper products. Small chips of word that come from furniture manufacturers sawmills or other sources are made to go through either chemical or mechanical separation into individual wood fibers. 

The pulp is then processed through a mixture of chemicals that dissolve the lignin from the word, resulting in a long fiber, strong paper suitable for printing or writing.

In the mechanical separation the resulting paper has short fiber length making up paper that does not have a lot of strength such as newspaper. 

Recycled paper mills

These mills use post-consumer paper as their raw material which is mixed with water in large containers making a pulp. In order to separate ink, metals, plastic or clay from the pulp, it is processed through several screens. 

After going through a process of washing with surfactants, the pulp is then free from ink or other particles. New paper based products such as cardboard board or Kraft fiber cover paper can be made from recycled paper.

With further bleaching and processing, the recycled pulp can be made into white or any colored paper that is suitable to be recycled up to 5 to 7 times before it can not be used anymore.  

Mills using recycled and virgin fiber

As the name suggests, these mills add recycled paper pulp into the virgin wood bulb for making paper products.

One of the major reasons that paper mills add recovered fiber or recycled paper pulp to their manufacturing process is environmental awareness and customers demanding recycled products at affordable rates. 

The need to focus on recycling paper

Now that we know that paper is already being made by using recycled paper for post consumer waste, we can be mindful of our paper products' usage. Consider following steps that help us in the ultimate goal of saving the environment. 

Paper is recyclable

For that matter, you must know that the fiber used in making paper can be recycled multiple times before it can not make useful paper anymore. As mentioned earlier, the long fiber paper is strong and as the fiber of the paper shortens over multiple(5-7 times) recycling processes it loses its strength and cannot be made into paper anymore. 

Recycling is a choice

Every day when you choose to throw more and more trash, be it plastic, paper or fabric, you are contributing to the global wastage problem. We must focus on reusing as much of our materials as we can, rather than sending it to be added to the landfills as trash. 

Choose recycled paper

By encouraging the use of recycled paper products, we can contribute to reducing the need to cut down trees and use paper made out of virgin fiber, while reducing the cost of making paper and making it affordable for us. Brown Kraft paper or  chipboard paper or cardboard paper are excellent paper products that can suffice all your printing, packaging as well as decorating needs.

We would always love to hear about your experience with recycling or recycled products in the comments or any of our social media platforms.