About Paper Recycling

Paper recycling is the process of recovering waste paper and remaking it into new paper products. There are three categories of paper that can be used as feed stocks for making recycled paper:

• Mill broke is paper trimmings and other paper scrap from the manufacture of paper, and is recycled internally in a paper mill.
• Pre-consumer waste is material that was discarded before it was ready for consumer use.
• Post-consumer waste is material discarded after consumer use, including OMG (old magazines), OTD (old telephone directories), and RMP (residential mixed paper). Paper suitable for recycling is called "scrap paper".

Since the early 1980s, recycled paper has progressed from gray and dingy flecked sheets, which many commercial printers would not use because of poor control of acidity and other problems, to an indistinguishable competitor of paper made from virgin feed stocks.

Some statistics on paper consumption:

• The average per capita paper use in the USA in 2001 was 700 pounds. The average per capita paper use worldwide was 110 pounds.
• Although paper is traditionally identified with reading and writing, communications has now been replaced by packaging as the single largest category of paper use at 41% of all paper used. Most corrugated fiberboard boxes have over 25% recycled fibers. Some are 100% recycled fiber.
• 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers.  The average web user prints 28 pages daily.

Source:  http://www.wikipedia.org