Is recycling PAPER really good for the environment?
April 26th, 2010
I have to do a project on a comparison, but I have heard that it is better to grow new trees then recycling old paper? Is recycling really good or is it bad for the environment?
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Recycling paper is the best option BUT……(also in response to the answer which stated that it uses less chemicals and "Im in the printing industry") It is only better if consumers use recycled paper responsibly and with an education on "recycled". Most paper that gets the wonderful stamp of "recycled" usually only has a fraction of post consumer content. A large portion of the "recycled" paper is paper that is recycled directly inside the paper company. If we are talking about post consumer recycling, there are some problems.
1. If we want that nice sparkling white paper, we are using a LOT of chemicals to turn pretty gross looking post consumer pulp into paper. (Basically the post consumer recycled paper that gets used for…yup you guessed it , printing. Because very few self respecting printers want their wedding invitations, funeral announcements, business cards, etc. looking like they were printed on a combo of newspaper and dryer lint, which is what most post-consumer recycled paper looks like. Also the dispersal of ink on this type of paper is horrendous.) It is a little known fact that we use massive amounts of chemicals first to break down the post consumer paper and then turn it minty white. I would argue that we use MORE chemicals to recycle paper into printing paper than to use a virgin source. Now it becomes an argument over how badly and at what quantity we need pure white paper.
2. If we can live with paper being a little colored and/or ugly, then we have to DEMAND as consumers that anything that doesn’t need to be white (bags, packing materials, wrapping paper, etc.) ALL gets made from post consumer recycled paper. This cuts the quantity of chemicals used down considerably. Then if we need pure white paper for a special project (graduation announcements) we can use "virgin" paper for that.
3. We need to DEMAND that the government use recycled paper for everything. Imagine the cutback in tree use simply from this avenue.
Also It is nothing like recycling metal. (Which also has problems in that it uses massive amounts of energy, further increasing our reliance on our military/industrial complex and uses massive amounts of fresh water which is fast becoming scarce.) Metal can be re-smelted ad infinitum. Not so with paper. Eventually the pulp becomes unusable to the paper industry.