Recycling of Paper

What is Recycling?

In general, Recycling is defined as a process of converting waste and non-useful products into new and useful products for human use. Recycling is an excellent and cost-efficient system of conserving the environment and saving energy.

Recycling of waste products is more essential as it helps in treating waste and used products and converting them into useful or new products. Recycling also helps in monitoring air, land and water pollution.

Paper is the most widely used material in today’s world. Even after the inventions of technologies, the demand for papers and books are increasing randomly. Every year, over 400 million metric tons of paper and its products are produced globally.

Bamboo, cotton, hemp, jute, and a wide range of other plant materials like wood pulp and fibres are used for making papers. On average, a sing tree is used to produce 8000 sheets of paper.

Also, Read Waste – Sources of Wastes

Recycling Of Paper

Paper is considered to be the major constituent of solid wastes, which makes 50% of the total garbage in landfills. To fulfil the demand for the papers and to protect our environment, there are many recycling plants mainly set up to recycle papers and to produce different usable paper products.

Papers are the only materials that can be most easily recycled by the process of reprocessing waste paper for reuse.

Let us now look into the different steps involved in the recycling of Paper.

Step -1

Papers are collected from the bin and are deposited in a large recycling container.

Step -2

These recycling containers are taken to a recycling plant where the paper wastes are segregated into types and grades.

Step -3

The segregated paper wastes are washed with soapy water to remove stains of inks, plastic film, staples, and glue.

Step -4

Later the washed papers are placed into a large holder containing water and are allowed to get mixed with water to create a slurry.

Step -5

To the created slurry, different materials are added to create new paper products, such as white papers, cardboard, newsprint, etc.

Step -6

The prepared slurry is moved or spread into large rollers to produce large thin sheets of paper.

Step -7

The papers are allowed to dry, then it is rolled up, packed and are ready for use.

Recycling saves energy and other natural resources like trees, forests, water and protect our environment by reducing the air, land, water, and soil pollution and also from the emissions harmful methane gases that are released into the earth’s atmosphere from the decomposition of biodegradable wastes and other hazardous wastes.

Also, Read Solid Waste Management and Nuclear Waste Management

This was the brief introduction on the Recycling of Paper. Like papers, there are various materials such as wood, glass, metals, plastics, electrical equipment, etc. are all recycled and new raw materials are produced for further use.

Stay tuned with BYJU’S to learn more in detail about the different types of recycling methods used to protect our environment from biodegradable and other hazardous wastes.

Further Reading:

Garbage in Garbage out