WE RECYCLE:

• letterhead paper, stationery and bond paper, memos and forms
• computer paper, copy machine paper, uncoated fax paper
• colored paper, yellow legal pad paper
• notebook paper without the binding
• carbonless carbon paper
• Post-it notes
• non-glossy brochures (glossy paper goes with in newspaper)
• envelopes with or without plastic windows
• adding machine tapes without the cardboard cores
• Dupont Tyvek envelopes BUT not in paper recycling. They are made of plastic and should be sent over to the Recycling Center in the Physical Plant for recycling

Staples do not have to be removed before recycling paper

WE DO NOT RECYCLE:

• tissue paper
• food wrappers or containers, pizza boxes, napkins, paper cups, any paper product contaminated by grease, oil, or food residue.
• coated fax paper, carbon paper, some blueprints
• wax paper, plastic shrink wraps, plastic or metal bindings
• commercial wrapping or decorated papers for wrapping presents
• Christmas cards, but don't throw them away! make them into Christmas cards for next year, decorations, bookmarks, gift boxes, etc. 
  Also, St. Jude's Ranch for Children is once again accepting used Christmas cards which they make into new cards and sell to support their ministry to children. Collect your cards and send them to St. Jude's and don't forget to buy recycled cards from their organization and close the loop
• hanging file folders (Reuse them! The Recycling Team will pick them up for reuse in other departments)

If the above non-recyclable materials are not reusable, they are not recyclable and should be thrown away with the regular trash. If the metal bindings can be removed, they can be recycled with metal.

WHERE TO RECYCLE:

• Put office paper in recycling containers marked "Office Paper".
• For individual offices, you may also request cardboard "recyclers" for collection of office paper. When full, empty your recycler in the larger corridor containers.
• Containers are located in all UST campus buildings including dormitories. If you cannot find a recycling container and want to request one, please call the Recycling Center at (96)2-6388.

FACTS ABOUT PAPER

• Recycling a ton of recycled paper saves 15 to 17 mature trees in paper production. Manufacturing one ton of office and computer paper with recycled paper stock can save between 3,000 and 4,000 kilowatt hours over the same ton of paper made with virgin wood products. from EPA WasteWise
• Production of recycled paper uses 80% less water, 65% less energy and produces 95% less air pollution than virgin paper production.
• By weight in 2006, over 34% of our U.S. garbage is paper according to the EPA.
• The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) reported that in 2004 the U.S. reached an all-time high of recovering 50.3 million tons of paper and paperboard.  The overall U.S. paper recovery rate was 49.5% [quoted in Recycling Today, Oct 05]. The EPA reported a recovery of 44 million tons of paper and paperboard out of 85.3 million tons generated. [EPA: Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States ] We've lost ground!
• A typical office worker goes through roughly 100–200 pounds of paper annually. The United States leads the world in paper use, but not in recycling (although we're improving). According to the EPA, paper in its various forms accounts for 40 percent of all U.S. solid waste. Office paper constitutes one quarter of that; we still throw away more than 80 percent of the paper used in the workplace. In 2000, Americans recovered 48 percent of the paper we use for recycling, totaling roughly 50 million tons, an all-time record. We still trail such countries as Japan and Germany, each of which boasts paper recycling rates in the low-to mid-50-percent range." from Chris Lotspeich, "Choosing Environmentally Preferable Paper"
• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper and paperboard are 35% or the waste stream in the U.S., the largest component of materials thrown away.  In 2003, 40 million tons of paper and paperboard was recovered through recycling giving a recovery rate of 48%, one of the highest rates for any commodity recycled.
• There are gross inequities in access to paper. The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, consumes 30 percent of the world's paper. Each year industrial countries use an average of 164 kilograms per person, while developing countries use just 18 kilograms per person (United States 335 kg/person/year, Japan 249, Germany 192, Brazil 39, China 27, India 4). However, usage is growing rapidly in some developing countries:
  between 1980 and 1997, consumption in Indonesia rose more than seven-fold, in China more than five-fold, and more than four-fold in South Korea and Thailand. Information from The Worldwatch Institute
• According to the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA), Americans recover for reuse a third of all the paper recovered in the world. This volume,  enables U.S. papermakers to recycle enough paper each year to fill a 15-mile-long train of boxcars.
• Recycling paper is very doable in the U.S. The AF&PA and the American Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council reported in 1997 a survey finding 199 million Americans live in communities with curbside or drop-off programs that accept paper for recycling.
• In Europe, under the European Union Packaging Directive, recycling rates are mandated for paper. As a result, recovery of paper has risen in five years from 39% to nearly 50%. Unfortunately, it has also resulted in a glut of post-consumer paper. For example, Germany's paper recovery rates have risen to 70.6% in the past five years while the highest their use of recycled material reached in 1996 was 60.3%. 
• "U.S. businesses alone consume an estimated 21 million tons of office paper every year - the equivalent of more than 350 million trees. If offices throughout the country increased the rate of two-sided photocopying from the 1991 figure of 20% to 60%, they could save the equivalent of about 15 million trees." from Choose to Reuse by Nikki & David Goldbeck, 1995
• American businesses throw away enough scrap paper each year to fill nearly 20 Sears Towers from top to bottom.
• Global paper use has grown more than six-fold since 1950. One fifth of all wood harvested in the world ends up in paper. It takes 2 to 3.5 tons of trees to make one ton of paper. Pulp and paper is the 5th largest industrial consumer of energy in the world, using as much power to produce a ton of product as the iron and steel industry. In some countries, including the United States, paper accounts for nearly 40 percent of all municipal solid waste. Making paper uses more water per ton than any other product in the world. Information from The Worldwatch Institute
• "Recycled pre-consumer content" labels on recycled paper refer to the reuse of scraps generated by the production process at the paper mills. These scraps have always been recycled in paper production, so it is questionable if such paper should be considered "recycled" fiber. To be environmentally friendly, the "recycled post-consumer content" label is the important one for closing the loop. Post-consumer means the paper fiber was first used by a consumer, then recycled so it could be made again into usable paper.
• It is estimated half of the forests that once covered the planet have already been cut down. According to ReThink Paper, the U.S. continues to cut some 4 billion cubic meters of timber annually. Thirty percent of all the trees logged in this country go directly into manufacturing paper products. Meanwhile, worldwide paper consumption is projected to expand 46% by the year 2040. ReThink Paper is dedicated to promoting a transition from virgin-wood fibers to nonwood fibers such as hemp or kenaf, reclaimed fabric, or agricultural residues such as wheat, straw, rice straw, sugarcane, cotton linters, and other "waste" material left over after harvest.
• Nearly half of all the world’s paper goes to packaging. Shipping companies such as Airborne, UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service are now using 50 to 100 percent post-consumer wastepaper for envelopes and boxes and are eliminating bleached paper. (UPS, the largest such company, ships over 3 billion packages per year.)
• When recycled paper was first being developed, occasional batches would come through that clogged copiers.  Copier manufacturers seized on this as an excuse for problems with their machines: "It's not the copier, it's the paper......" Some copier manufacturers are still using that excuse today. The fact is that recycled copy paper is not any more of a problem for today's copiers than virgin paper.
• Holiday and birthday gift wrapping or tissue paper cannot be recycled. Most wrapping papers have some kind of decoration, coating, foil, glitter or other additives that make them difficult to recycle. The fibers in tissue paper are too short to be recycled into new paper. Avoid using nonrecyclable wrappings and instead use reusable containers, boxes or bags to present your gifts.

Return to Top

© 2008 University of St. Thomas, Minnesota USA
All rights reserved.