In general, recycled paper is cheaper than virgin paper.
It is often impossible to tell the difference between quality recycled and virgin paper.
Recycled Paper Facts
PRE-consumer waste is the virgin paper trimmings, cut-offs, leader sheets and breaks that occur at the paper mill. These scraps are reused (recycled) by the mill in manufacturing paper (sort of like the 3-second rule when you drop a piece of candy)
POST-consumer waste is paper that has been used by the consumer (newspaper, magazines, product cartons...). These scraps are recycled through special de-inking and pulping facilities before re-entering the paper manufacturing mill.
Recycled paper requires only a fraction of the processing needed to make virgin paper, using 40-70% less energy.
Recycled fibers can be reprocessed 6-8 times before they become too broken up to bind together. Although virgin paper is the source, only 1/6th -1/8th of that resource is needed to replenish the loss.
The use of 100% post-consumer recycled paper guarantees
there has been no detrimental affects to forestry
Recycled Paper Savings
Recycling one ton (2200 lbs) of newspaper:
- saves 17 trees
- saves enough energy to power an average home for 6 months
- eliminates 3 cubic metres of landfill
- saves 31,780 litres of water
- creates 75 percent less air pollution
- takes 43 percent less energy than producing a ton of paper from virgin pulp
- creates 35 percent less water pollution
(These are based on Canadian figures sourced from Environment Canada 1992)
