- Paper and paperboard products are widely used and can be recycled. Paper products are useful because the aftermath of processed wood makes the product strong and rigid. Because of this construction, products such as cardboard and paper meet specific requirements for daily use. Through our booming online delivery services, cardboard boxes are constantly being delivered to houses and then quickly discarded. This leaves us with the question of what to do with this material once it has served its original purpose.
- According the the website of the University of Southern Indiana, the average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees which equates to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year (1). The author of this site states that Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person (1). The 680 pounds of paper needs to go somewhere after it is discarded. Compared to other countries, paper is recycled broken down from its original form very well. Put is is less likely that the sludge is turned into other material forms. A large portion of this sludge goes into landfills.
- According to an article titled Making Cardboard and Paper Recycling More Sustainable: Recycled Paper Sludge For Energy Production and Water-Treatment Applications, written by Roi Peretz, Peretz writes about the massively large amounts of sludge that is formed throughout the recycling process (2). This sludge can make up to around 40% input mass. But this sludge is mostly disposed in landfills, resulting in added economic and environmental costs to the recycling process.
- The advantages of recycling paper products is that at its simplest form, there are no hazardous components that have to be designed around. Because the product is made from an earthly material that is already incorporated into ecosystems, there is not a ton of pressure to keep it separated from the earth when compared to synthetic materials such as plastics. Because of this, I would argue that in the metrics of money, paper is a smart choice because it can go into the environment without having much cleanup afterwards. Compared to plastic, eventually we will need to orchestrate large scale cleanups of plastic that never goes away.
(source: EPA) (3)
Citations
(1) “Main Navigation.” University of Southern Indiana, www.usi.edu/recycle/paper-recycling-facts.
(2) Peretz, Roi, et al. “Making Cardboard and Paper Recycling More Sustainable: Recycled Paper Sludge For Energy Production and Water-Treatment Applications.” Waste and Biomass Valorization 12.3 (2021): 1599-1608.
(3) “National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 28 Jan. 2021, www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials#recycling.