The Mt. Vernon High Tech feels that recycling is a very important part of the world today. MVHS HTA was able to get recycle bins put in the parking lot at all of the schools to make it easier for people to get rid of all of their extra paper in an environmentally friendly way! Below is information on why it is important to recycle paper.



PAPER - THE NUMBER ONE TRASH

What is the number one material in the solid waste stream? Before you say plastics, look around your school classroom. What do you see? Posters? Notebooks? Cardboard boxes? Textbooks? Bulletin boards decorated with construction paper? You get the picture. Paper is everywhere!

Paper is the number one material that we throw away. For every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, 35 pounds is paper. Newspapers take up about 14 percent of landfill space, and paper in packaging accounts for another 15 to 20 percent.

Paper has many forms. It can be glossy or ragged, thin or thick. It can be the stuff of newspapers or the stuffing of diapers. Most paper products are made from trees that have been cut and pulped, though paper can also be made from old cloth or grass.

HOW PAPER IS MADE

In 2003, the paper industry in the U.S. reached its goal to recover 50 percent of all paper.

By achieving this goal, 20 million more tons of paper was recovered. The industry has set a new goal of recovering 55 percent of used paper by 2012.

Today, more than a third of all the paper that is recovered in the world is recovered in the U.S.

Old corrugated containers (boxes) account for nearly 50 percent of the total paper that is recycled.

Papermaking uses a natural, renewable resource—trees! The first step in papermaking is harvesting the trees. Paper companies plant trees specifically for papermaking, much like an apple farmer grows apple trees to produce apples. If one tree is cut down, another is planted to replace it.

After the trees are harvested, they are delivered to a paper mill. Paper mills use every part of the tree so nothing is wasted. The bark and roots are burned and used for energy to run the paper mill. The rest of the tree is chopped into small chips for pulping. Pulping is a chemical process that separates the wood fibers from lignin and other wood parts.

Pulp is the soft, spongy part of a tree. Lignin is the glue that holds a tree together. If lignin is left in a paper product, the paper turns yellow and brittle when it’s exposed to light. You have probably noticed that newspapers turn yellow very quickly. Lignin is usually left in newsprint, since newspapers are only meant to last a day or so.

After pulping, paper is the color of grocery bags. High quality papers are whitened with chlorine bleach and sometimes coated with clays and adhesives to give them a glossy finish. Paper mills need a lot of energy to produce paper. About 50 percent of their energy comes from wood scraps that cannot be used to make paper. The rest of the energy is purchased from local power companies or generated on site by the mill using other energy sources.

RECYCLED PAPER

Recycled paper is made from waste paper, usually mixed with fresh wood pulp. If the paper contains ink, the paper must be deinked. Deinking also removes fillers, clays, and fiber fragments.

Almost all paper can be recycled today, but some types are harder to recycle than others. Papers that are waxed, pasted, or gummed—or papers that are coated with plastic or aluminum foil—are usually not recycled because the process is too expensive. Even papers that are recycled are not usually recycled together. Waste papers should be sorted. You shouldn’t mix newspapers and cardboard boxes together for recycling.

Different grades of paper are recycled into different types of new products. Old newspapers are usually made into new newsprint, egg cartons, or paperboard. Old corrugated boxes are made into new corrugated boxes or paperboard. High-grade white office paper can be made into almost any new paper product—stationery, newsprint, or paper for magazines and books.

Sometimes recyclers ask you to remove the glossy inserts that come with newspapers. The newsprint and glossy inserts are different types of paper.

Glossy inserts have a heavy clay coating that some paper mills cannot accept. Besides, a paper mill gets more recyclable fibers from a ton of pure newsprint than it does from a ton of mixed newsprint that is weighed down with heavy clay-coated papers.

Unlike most other recyclables, paper cannot be recycled over and over again. Eventually the fibers become too weak and short to be used again. That is why virgin paper fiber is usually mixed with recycled paper when new paper products are made. Most cardboard boxes are a mixture of 50 percent new and 50 percent recycled fibers.