Pepper Mail House and Print Services

RECYCLED PAPER

    PAPER   

RAW MATERIAL Waste paper

RAW MATERIAL Virgin wood

Impacts:

Collection of waste (transport)

Impacts:
Forestry and harvesting. These include road building, and energy for cutting timber and stripping branches. Unless the forest is managed sustainably, these can involve reduction of biodiversity (especially with plantations), the effects of planting non-native trees (eg, use of agrochemicals, soil depletion), lack of access for local people, wildlife habitat destruction and damage to rivers. Many of these are exacerbated where ‘clearcutting’ is practised.

PULP PROCESSING

PULP PROCESSING

Summary of process:
Repulping (put simply, mincing in a giant food-processor - reprocessed pulp does not require the extended cooking and bleaching needed for producing virgin pulp), washing to separate ink particles from fibre, screening and centrifuging to remove staples, adhesives, bindings, etc.), removal of ink particles by floating them off with soap and air bubbles, bleaching to brighten, drying for transport to paper mill.

Impacts:
Chemicals for washing and bleaching, plus process additives (including the manufacture and the production of effluents/emissions in use). Energy use. Water use. Solid wastes

Summary of process:
Debarking and chipping, digesting - pulping and extended cooking (to de-lignify, which is what prevents the paper yellowing the way newsprint does), washing, bleaching, drying for transport to paper mill.

Impacts:
Chemicals for cooking, de-lignifying, bleaching, plus process additives (including their manufacture and the production of effluents/emissions in use). Energy use. Water use. Solid wastes

Note: Modern bleaching methods do not use elemental chlorine, which was formerly standard, and one of paper’s most serious environmental impacts.

PAPER MAKING (both recycled and virgin)

Summary of process:
The paper making process is the same for both virgin and recovered pulps. Essentially, it involves mixing the pulped wood (or recycled paper) with 97% water and adding fillers to improve opacity. Then the mix is poured on to a very long vibrating mesh conveyor to spread into a thin film. At the end of the conveyor, the web of paper transfers to a set of steam heated rollers for further drying, when the surface is also ‘sized’ to seal it. It is then coated (if appropriate) and ‘calendered’ - polished by heated steel rollers much like a giant, multi-rollered mangle. Matt paper is lightly polished, gloss paper more so. Once drying is complete, the paper is reeled off on to huge jumbo reels, and cut to finished size.

Impacts:
Use of large quantities of freshwater (though this can be mitigated by reuse).
Extraction and processing of china clay, calcium carbonate, titanium, starch and other materials used for fillers, ‘sizing’ and coating. Uncoated papers obviously have much lower impacts.
Effluents: These are rapidly diminishing - virtually to zero in the better mills, thanks to improved waste treatment on site.
Emissions: from energy generation (eg, carbon, sulphur and nitrous oxides) - although plants investing in biomass or other CHP, and, especially, renewables, produce far fewer; and from the process itself (such as dust, halons, suspended solids and phosphorous).
Solid wastes include everything from packaging for chemicals to dried sludge - although this can be used for everything from soil conditioner to cat litter (thanks to its highly absorbent qualities)!

END OF LIFE IMPACTS

END OF LIFE IMPACTS

Paper which is recycled never really ‘dies’ - it goes around again (the fibres that become too short through constant recycling form part of the sludge that is one of the process wastes).

If not recycled, paper either goes to landfill - where its leachate may seep into groundwater, and its decomposition produce methane (a potent greenhouse gas) - or it is incinerated (producing carbon emissions).

TRANSPORT

TRANSPORT

Throughout the process - from felling the trees to dumping waste paper in landfill or returning it to the recycling plant - there are, of course, all the impacts associated with transport. Some of this is international; all but 8% of the UK ’s pulp supply is imported - mostly from Scandinavia or the USA