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Recycling Paper FactsGathering facts on recycling paper can be fun. Here is some paper recycling trivia:
For every ton of paper that is recycled, about 3 cubic yards of landfill space is saved. In 2005, nearly fifty percent of the paper used in the United States was recycled into new paper products instead of being sent to the landfill. Today, recovered paper supplies over 40 percent of the total fiber needed to produce U.S. paper products. Almost all the paper manufactured in Europe and the U.S. through the mid-1800s was recycled paper. Old rags and worn-out clothing were the main source of fiber supplying the paper mills (the process for making paper from wood pulp had not yet been developed). Even though some papers claim 100% recycled fiber, paper makers will often combine various amounts of post-consumer recycled fiber with new, pre-consumer fiber to produce paper of higher quality. Pre-consumer recovered paper is a mixture of trimmings and scraps from printing, carton manufacturing, and other converting processes that are gathered and reprocessed in the mill into a product.
Post-consumer recovered paper is what consumers bring to the recycling center - corrugated boxes, newspapers, magazines, and office paper that has already has been used. It is then returned to the paper mill for reprocessing.
Wood fibers can be recycled up to seven times before they become too short and worn out to be made into paper again. New wood fiber is needed to replace the unusable recycled fiber that washes out of the pulp during the recycling paper process.
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