1* First, the waste paper must be collected. One of the most expensive parts of recycling is the collection, sorting, and transportation of waste paper.

2* The next step is repulping. The bales of sorted waste paper are soaked in large vats, where they disintegrate into fibers.

3* Chemicals are added at this point so that, when ink particles start to separate from the paper, they can't reattach themselves to the pulp.

To remove the ink, the pulp is fed into a deinking system.

*First, a series of increasingly fine screens remove extraneous material (known as "trash"), coatings and additives, and extremely small contaminants such as fillers and loose ink particles.

*The screened pulp is sent through several cleaning stages, where heat, chemicals, and mechanical action may be used to loosen ink particles.

*Finally, the pulp mixture enters a flotation device, where calcium soap and other chemicals are added. Air bubbles in the mixture float the remaining ink to the surface, where it is skimmed away.

4* The deinked pulp is now sent to the stock preparation area, where it is treated and loaded into the headbox of a paper machine. From this point, the pulp is treated just the same as if it had been freshly made from wood chips rather than recycled.

5* At the end of the recycling process, a new paper product has been produced from material that might otherwise have been dumped in a landfill. Recycling is an important way for consumers and papermakers to work together for a cleaner environment.

Did you know?

You can help by presorting your household waste, by separating newspapers, for example, from magazines. It is also important to keep the paper out of rain and sunlight, because exposure to the elements makes it harder to remove the ink from the paper.

Most synthetic plastics are not environmentally degradable; unlike paper, they do not rot or otherwise break down over time. (Some degradable plastics have been developed, but none has proved compatible with the conditions required for most waste landfills.) Thus, there is an environmental problem associated with the disposal of plastics. Recycling has emerged as the most practical method to deal with this problem. So why don’t you try to decrease the use of plastics? Use paper products instead, like paper bags for example.

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