People often talk about how important it is to recycle paper, but do you know why? And what actually happens to your old paper when it goes to the recycling plant? The good news is that recycling paper is absolutely vital for saving the planet, and recycling plants are incredibly effective at taking care of paper products. Discover five amazing facts about the process of recycling paper.
1. Paper Usage
According to most estimates, the average person in America uses about seven trees-worth of paper every year; that includes bills, grocery lists, journals, and documents for work. While seven may not sound like a large number, it adds up to a whopping two billion trees for the entire country. About half of that amount is thrown into landfills.
2. Recycled Paper’s Impact
Think recycled paper can’t possibly make a big impact on America’s paper waste problem? Think again. Here are all the things we save by recycling just one ton of paper:
- 17 trees
- 3 cubic yards in a landfill
- Almost 400 gallons of oil
- 4,000kW of electricity
- 7,000 gallons of water
It’s easy to forget how many resources it takes to make paper. The oil goes into the machines needed to cut the trees and process the wood into pulp. Electricity also powers the facilities that make the paper. And you can’t make paper pulp without huge amounts of water. By some estimates, recycled paper requires less than half the amount of resources as new paper.
3. Paper Shredding
The first step in making recycled paper is to sort and shred the old paper back into pulp. Then, machines mix the pulp and break it down with chemicals that destroy the old bonds.
4. Impurity Removal
You may know that amino resins are used to make particleboard furniture, but you might not realize they’re also used to refine paper. The amino resins cause ink to stick to bubbles that the recycling plants filter out of the pulp, which helps purify the product. This process is just one of the ways amino resins help the environment.
5. Spray-On Paper
Modern paper is actually sprayed onto giant conveyor belts. The conveyor belts allow the water to drip out, which activates the bonding agents in the pulp. Then, the pulp goes through dryers that finish turning it into usable paper.
We hope these five amazing facts about the process of recycling paper encourage you to recycle your paper more often. Every tree saved helps protect our planet from greenhouse gases and environmental damage.