From Forest to Board Room

There is no escaping America’s demand for box of cereal or a six-pack of your favorite beverage.

In fact, Americans use nearly 750 pounds of paper products per year, per person – that’s almost a third of all the paper produced worldwide. Yet, few people understand the process by which these ubiquitous products find their way from the forests into our homes and offices. The manufacture and recycling of paper products has progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years, so it is worth giving the process another look.

There are three main sources for paper products:

• Trees: Hardwood trees, like oak and maple, are used to produce writing paper, while softer wood is typically used for shipping and packaging purposes. About 15 percent of these trees come from private tree farms, while the rest come from forests.
• Scrap: Waste material from lumber mills is collected and shipped for processing at paper mills. This is often referred to as recycled content on packaging.
• Recycled paper: Also known as post-consumer content (what most people consider to be the same as recycled content). Despite our high consumption of paper, Americans recycle more than half of all the paper they use each year. Post-consumer waste, together with scrap, constitutes nearly half of the materials used to produce paper.

You may notice that much of your paper is not brown, like the color of tree trunks. This is indicative of some of the processes involved in papermaking.

Once in the mills, wood is ground into tiny bits that are heated in a vat of water and chemicals to produce pulp – the separated bits of cellulose that make paper. Before the pulp is heated and dried, materials such as starch and clay are added to give the paper shine and add strength. Finally the paper may be whitened using either hydrogen peroxide or bleach (usually some form of chlorine). While many mills in the U.S. are now using safer hydrogen peroxide, 74 facilities continue to use chlorine or chlorine dioxide in their manufacturing processes.

The final products most likely fall into three main categories:

• Containerboard: At just over 30 percent of all paper products, containerboard includes common corrugated cardboard boxes used in shipping and storage.
• Printing/writing paper: A close second, almost 30 percent of U.S. products fall in to this easily recognizable and recyclable category.
• Boxboard: Just over 20 percent of paper products are boxboard, which is used to make everything from milk cartons to shoe boxes.
• The remaining 20 percent is split almost evenly among newsprint, tissue and packaging paper (five to eight percent each).

The good news is that over 85 percent of Americans have access to local recycling programs.  Use Earth911 to find one near you.