Paper recycling has been around for a long time. Actually, when you think about it, paper has been a recycled product since the beginning of our civilization. Recycling paper conserves natural resources, saves energy, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and keeps landfill space free for other types of trash that can’t be recycled. Recycled paper, instead of using raw wood pulp from trees, is produced from the wastepaper generated by paper mills, print shops, envelope makers, homes, and businesses. Papermaking is essentially the same for both recycled and non-recycled papers, only the process for preparing the fiber is different for recycled paper. The process used in making recycled paper is what can help save our natural resources and reduce environmental pollution.
Making recycled paper produced from waste paper, rather than extracting them from raw wood pulp, saves trees and uses 30-70 percent less energy, 50 percent less water, reduces air and water pollution by 35 percent, decreases acid rain, lower down garbage overload thereby saving landfill space, and creating 5 times as many jobs.
Let’s elaborate more as to how recycling helps in creating more jobs, For example, 1 ton of paper made from 100 percent wastepaper, rather than from virgin fiber, saves 17 trees, 4100 kwh energy (enough to power the average home for six months), 7,000 gallons of water, 60 pounds of air polluting effluents, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, and taxpayer dollars that would have been used for the cost of waste disposal.
We could radically improve the quality of our environment simply by choosing to use recycled paper products instead of new one. Recycled paper offers the same high-quality as virgin paper products with no compromise. Recycled paper is virtually indistinguishable from the raw paper. Therefore, you can never distinguish between the two. In terms of quality as well, you will never find any compromises between the two.
Therefore it’s a good idea to make a change by increasing the demand for recycled paper products. You can always pay the extra price when necessary and purchase/support recycled paper products and the companies offering them. When you take our environment and your health into consideration, no effort is too large and no price is too high!