First of all, thank you for being here. This post is the fifty-third on my blog, marking the one-year anniversary of Radical Moderate. I started this blog a year ago after receiving several requests from friends who appreciated my thoughtful, researched Facebook posts on various topics from recycling practices to election candidates. While I’m sure I would still be doing this type of research on my own, I probably would not be continuing to write weekly posts in this particular medium if not for your continued support. Time is our most precious and non-renewable resource, so I am truly honored that you have chosen to spend some of yours here.
In honor of the first anniversary of this blog, we will be taking a closer look at paper, the traditional first anniversary gift. As I mentioned in last week’s post on toilet paper,[1] there are a lot of resources that go into the production of paper. Given the strain on resources such as trees, water, and electricity, it makes sense first to use less and keep recycling as a last resort. However, many people are not aware that “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” are supposed to be done in that order, and instead look to recycling as a way to negate their footprint; it is not. And unfortunately, the state of recycling – at least in the Pittsburgh area – may not even be as good as you think.
Image credit: [2]
Paper Production and Use
Let’s start with some fun facts about paper usage. It goes without saying that we use a lot of it. In fact, 50% of global industrial logging goes to support worldwide paper production. The pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy in the world, at 4% of total global use, and it is the third-largest air, water, and land polluter among all industries in Canada and the US.[3]
As for Americans, we use more paper than any other country in the world, consuming 30% of the global supply. Our demand requires 68 million trees a year for paper products – the equivalent of 18 million acres a year, or 20 football fields a minute. The average American uses more than 700 pounds of paper per year, or seven trees’ worth. The average office worker goes through 10,000 sheets per year, and despite many companies’ efforts to go paperless, consumption is still growing in the US.
Purchasing recycled paper is significantly more beneficial from a resource standpoint than choosing standard paper. The production of recycled paper results in 40% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, takes 26% less energy, requires 43% less water, and leads to 73% less air pollution than the production of standard, virgin paper. Ultimately if you can’t reduce your usage (always the best option) or reuse paper (the second-best option), recycling is the way to go. Unfortunately, not as much paper gets recycled as you might think.
The practice of recycling is automatic for many of us, with recycle bins in offices and curbside pickups at home. In 2017 the US recycled 44.2 million tons of paper and paperboard. However, despite those impressive numbers, 45% of printed pages in the office still typically end up in the trash. 26% of municipal solid waste, which ends up in landfills, is paper.[4]
Image credit: [5]
Materials Recovery Facilities
When it comes to recycling (and this is going to be specific to Allegheny County but likely relevant elsewhere), our process is not optimal. I know many people who believe whatever goes into the curbside bin gets recycled. The inaugural post on this blog last February touched on the sadly novel concept of “just because it’s collected does not mean it’s recycled.” Both of the Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) used by Allegheny County’s municipalities have a very limited list of items that actually get recycled: aluminum, steel, paper & cardboard, and #1 & #2 plastic bottles (yes, bottles only). Everything else goes to the landfill.
Single-stream recycling was originally designed to be more convenient for customers, but it has resulted in a messy system that involves 1) non-recyclable materials getting added to the mix[6] and 2) recyclable materials not getting sorted out properly. The sorting process is highly sophisticated, and I recommend reading the NPR article referenced here to learn more about how the sorting machines work, but the machines aren’t perfect, and on top of that, you’ve got humans involved – both are partly to blame.[7]
Contamination is a big issue for recyclers, especially with materials that aren’t pre-sorted. Batches of recyclable materials can’t be recycled when undesirable things are mixed in with them, for example pizza boxes with grease or newspapers with bits of broken glass (which is incidentally one of the reasons why our local MRFs stopped recycling glass). If part of the batch is contaminated, the whole batch has to be thrown out, robbing recyclers of their revenue.
The City of Pittsburgh used to make significantly more revenue from selling its recyclables, but the value has dropped to about one tenth of what it was in 2013, mostly because of changes in global markets (specifically Chinese demand). It’s still cheaper for the city to recycle materials instead of landfilling them, but single stream collection services are starting to creep up in cost (about $25-$30 per ton),[8] and that may impact the City’s decisions about how to approach recycling services in the future.
Image credit: [9]
On the other side of the equation, not everything in the stream gets sorted properly, especially odd-sized pieces of paper or junk mail. If you’re putting paper into your single-stream curbside bin, you risk contaminating it with grease or other substances that can make it unfit for recycling. By sorting your paper out yourself to take to a paper-specific recycler, you can guarantee that it will be recycled. An off-the-record source told me that if you have access to a paper recycler, such as a local Abitibi bin, you should absolutely be using that instead of the curbside option for recycling paper.
Abitibi Facts
As I mentioned in my recent Christmas Card post,[10] Abitibi bins are a great option for you if you can find one nearby. The yellow and green dumpsters are hired by schools, churches, and municipalities, which then receive part of the profit of the paper they collect for recycling. They take newspaper and inserts, magazines and catalogs, office and school papers, and mail. They do not take hard cover books or phone books.[11] I checked with a local resource before last year’s Zero-Waste Lent challenge[12] that receipts are OK too – and that’s where all of mine go.
I keep a box in the laundry room that I fill up over the course of several weeks with junk mail, receipts, post-it notes, scraps, and other random paper recyclables. Once it’s full, I drive it over to the nearest Abitibi bin (which just happens to be close to one of our favorite breweries) and enjoy the wonderful feeling of doing something good for the environment and a local church. As I’ve done before, I am including a link to a spreadsheet I started compiling last year that lists Abitibi locations. If you have one near you, please feel free to let me know, and I will update the list.
Of course, the best option is to reduce your paper usage before you even think about recycling, but if you’re going to recycle, there is a more effective option than curbside.
Happy Paper Anniversary, and thanks for reading!
[1] https://radicalmoderate.online/bidet-vs-toilet-paper/
[2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-paper.html
[3] https://www.tonerbuzz.com/facts-about-paper/
[4] https://www.tonerbuzz.com/facts-about-paper/
[5] https://earth911.com/business-policy/business/paper-recycling-details-basics/
[6] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/396319000/with-single-stream-recycling-convenience-comes-at-a-cost
[7] https://www.nextpittsburgh.com/features/pittsburgh-has-a-recycling-problem-what-can-you-do-to-help/
[8] https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2019/05/24/pittsburgh-recycling-rules-drop-off-center-recycle-bin-changes/stories/201905160124
[9] https://www.shaler.org/220/Recycling
[10] https://radicalmoderate.online/christmas-cards-and-their-environmental-impacts/
[11] https://www.waukeganpl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/paper-retriever.pdf
[12] https://radicalmoderate.online/zero-waste-lent-ground-rules/
1 Comment
Tidying Up, Week 4 – Papers – Radical Moderate · March 7, 2021 at 10:02 am
[…] [5] https://radicalmoderate.online/paper-recycling-in-pittsburgh/ […]