Where does it go?

Our drivers hand sort the paper into 4 grades:

• White paper. Contaminants in the paper such as envelopes or photocopier ream wrappers have to be removed. Our white paper’s excellent quality means that it is in high demand on the Continent, and most of it is sold to Germany or Holland. White paper has the highest environmental value because it can be used by mills as a virgin pulp substitute, reducing demand for trees throughout the world.
• Sorted office waste. This is a mixture of white envelopes, magazines, coloured paper & white paper too badly mixed to be worth sorting. It is taken down to M-Real’s site in Kent. They have invested heavily in state-of-the-art recycling technology. This enables the paper to be recycled back into high grade copier paper, which Paper Round sells back to its customers under the Evolve brand.
• Newspaper & magazines. Aylesford Newsprint in Kent convert this back into newsprint reels which is then sold to printing works.
• Cardboard. This is baled and then made back into packaging materials and cardboard at a number of mills in the UK, often in the North West and North East of England.

Paper Recycling process

The recycling process is broadly similar for all types of paper. At the mill the paper is mixed with large quantities of water to form a slurry of fibres. It is sieved to remove contaminants such as staples and any fibres that are too short. Inks are removed by bubbling air through the mixture and through the use of various brighteners and bleaches.

The clean usable fibre is piped to the pulper, where further water is added to produce a very thin slurry. This is then pumped onto a mesh screen (the wire) above a trough. Much of the water drains off here and is recirculated. As the fibre goes over the wire it begins to take a wet sheet-like form.

Next the fibres go through a series of dryers and rollers before ending up on a long reel. This reel is cut into smaller rolls for printers to use or for converting into sheets of paper or envelopes.

The unusable residues of paper recycling, mainly fibres that are too short, old inks, clays and other fillers, are known as ‘sludge’. This is typically burnt by the recycling plant to generate heat and power for the recycling process, or is used as a soil conditioner by farmers.