[GreenYes] Re: Recycled paper in trouble?

[Peter Spendelow <spendelow.peter@no.address>]

Susan,

Thanks for the good information.  I'm curious as to how you would view
the major trend in recycling that we have seen in Oregon over the last
decade.

In Oregon, our large newsprint mills have converted their cleaning and
deinking system to better make use of junk mail and magazines.  Most
Oregon curbside programs collect all grades of paper mixed together.
Material recovery facilities attempt to separate out the corrugated
cardboard, cereal box board, and other unbleachable paper, but the
white and colored ledger, coated papers, magazines, and other
compatible papers remain in with the newspaper and are sold to our
paper mills as newsprint.  More and more now, commercial office paper
is also going the same route.  The newsprint mills like office paper
because it whitens their product and probably provides strength
benefits too.

Do you view using office paper and junk mail to make whiter newspaper
to be a downgrading of the fiber?  Do you think we should be providing
incentives or educational programs to direct office paper to go new
office paper production?  How about the use of office paper to make
bleached white toilet and tissue paper.  A fair chunk of our office
paper is recycled into bleached white toilet paper, and that use seems
to well make use of the properties of office paper (i.e. uses the fact
that it is bleached as well as its strength).

So do you think recycling office paper into newsprint is downgrading?
How about recycling office paper into bleached toilet or tissue paper?

One final note to John Reindl - I don't know that I have the facts to
back me up on this because I don't know the amount of recycled paper
produced in Wisconsin, but we do use lots of recycled paper in making
our newsprint and corrugated in Oregon, and so it is possible that our
mill's recycled content rivals yours.

Peter Spendelow
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality


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