Article Contributed on: 9/25/2009 5:15:45 PM
See the slide show after the article for more recycle, reduce, and reuse ideas.
With most products it takes less energy to make a product from recycled materials than it does to make it from new materials. Natural resources are things of value provided by the Earth, they include land, plants, minerals, and water. If we use materials more than once, we are conserving our natural resources.
For every ton of paper made from recycled materials we save up to 17 trees and use 50% less water.
Paper making is a process using wood that has been around for about 4,000 years. The process has eight stages, and they all take energy: debarking, chipping, pulping, bleaching, paper machine, clad coater, supercalendar, and sheet converting.
Debarking happen in a large, spinning and rotating drum that makes the logs move around, as the logs rub against each other, the bark comes off.
Then a large rotating knife goes in circles and cuts the logs into chips, this is called chipping.
The next step is called Pulping and there are two main pulping processes, chemical pulping and mechanical pulping. Chemical pulping is the most common form in North America. The wood chips are cooked in sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide until it is made into a dark pulp. Mechanical pulping forces debarked logs against a grinding stone or metal disks to produce pulp.
Bleaching is used next to purify and clean the pulp.
Paper Machine involves mixing the pulp (now called wood fiber) with water, when the water drains the paper is squeezed between rollers, dryers remove more water and then a coating of starch and minerals is added for stronger smoother paper. Dried again and finally the paper is wound into giant rolls.
Blade coating deposits a thin coating onto the finished paper.
Supercalender is a machine made up of many large rollers that put pressure and heat to make paper glossy and smooth. The paper is then cut into smaller rolls.
Sheet Converting is the last stage where some of the paper rolls are cut into sheets, while others are packaged for shipping.
Think about how many trees and how much energy is saved when we recycle. What can you do to reduce the amount of paper wasted and recycled? The slide show has a few ideas and some beautiful trees that need your protection.
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