How Paper Recycling Works: A Tour of Marcal

By Shel Horowitz

Years ago, I made a commitment that I would use recycled paper as much as possible: both in my computer printer and in household paper products such as napkins and toilet paper. These days, it’s easy to find suppliers of both types of paper who manufacture exclusively from recycled paper.

But how exactly is it possible to take old leftover junk mail and turn it into something clean and white and fresh and ready to use again? I went to the perfect source to find out: Marcal, a household paper products company that started using recycled paper all the way back in 1950, before most people currently on the planet (including me) were even born.

How does this pioneering recycler turn this mish-mash of bright colors, staples, plastic envelope windows, etc. into a pure-white soft yet strong paper good enough to use on your bottom, or on your kitchen counter spill? And why did the company go recycled so early, long before it was fashionable?

It’s all done at a sprawling, aged industrial plant in Elmwood Park, New Jersey (just outside of Patterson). Just 13 miles from New York City, Marcal has a steady source of raw materials: thousands of pounds per day of unwanted mail and paper waste, from Manhattan’s hundreds of thousands of offices and other municipalities of all sizes, most located near the plant. This is what’s called “post-consumer” paper: printed, read (or not), and thrown into the recycle bin. Along with the junk mail is another large input: pre-consumer waste, never printed on but unable to be processed as virgin paper. This includes (among other things) paper at the ends of rolls from printing plants (too small to run a big job), and also anything that went through Marcal’s own production but was rejected for whatever reason. (Looking at Marcal’s discards, I personally could not see the quality problems—but I’m no expert, of course).

The pre-consumer paper is already a very bright shade of white, but obviously the stream of post-consumer paper has to be treated. Various large machines separate the paper from staples and glassine, remove the ink, and turn the paper white again with hydrogen peroxide (far less toxic than the chlorine bleach many paper mills use).

The process uses about the same amount of energy as conventional paper making, and less compared to manufacturers that incorporate a technique called through air dried technology.  The plant makes lots of noise;  I was given earplugs at the start of my tour. However, the amount of energy and water to make virgin paper from trees is much greater, especially if you count in whole-lifecycle costs that are too-often “externalized” out of the equation—which, for papermaking, would include not only the energy and labor involved in cutting trees into logs, milling logs into paper, and transporting the paper vast distances across the country, but also the impact on global warming of removing carbon-sequestering mature trees, and the energy and water costs of replanting new trees to be harvested a few decades from now. Thus, the recycling process is indeed more environmentally beneficial than the traditional approach.

Also, of course, the recycling process removes a lot of paper from the waste stream. This is paper that is not clogging up landfills, and not generating toxins by being burned in an incinerator. It’s being used again to make paper, and it’s also not causing forests to be cut down.

So how is it that Marcal started using recycled paper all the way back in 1950?  Senior Marketing VP MJ Jolda told me that the answer was simply that virgin paper was too hard to get in the aftermath of World War II. In fact, the company’s packaging didn’t even mention the recycled factor until the last decade or so—but now, realizing that its long-term commitment to recycling makes it attractive to consumers, it’s built a whole new modern brand, Marcal Small Steps, entirely around the idea of saving trees by using paper goods made from 100 percent recycled paper.

Shel Horowitz, shel at greenandprofitable.com, shows you how to "reach green, socially conscious consumers with marketing that has THEM calling YOU." He writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical columns and is the primary author ofGuerrilla Marketing Goes Green (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).



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Setting the Default to Green: A Guest Post by Shel Horowitz

Here’s an easy and enormous step we as a society can take toward a greener world: When there are default settings, change them to the greener option. That way, if the user isn’t thinking about what he or she is doing, the choice is the thing that happens. So if most of your printing is something other than final camera-ready copy, for instance, set your printer to print two-sided (if it has that option) and to use the lower density of toner designed for drafts. You may waste the occasional sheet of paper for which those settings don’t give you enough quality, but over time, you’re likely to save a whole lot more than you waste.

However, if you can train yourself to think about the settings before each use, that’s better, of course—because when the greener choice is the wrong choice, you generate waste when you have to do it over.
Companies can do this as they set the defaults in the factory—and so can individuals. Look around at how many things you can control, and examine the defaults. And of course, if you have to replace a piece of equipment or a supply, look for replacement items that have green settings so you can make them the default.
Here are a few examples of the places you can save.

Dishwashers: Use light or normal wash, instead of the pots and pans setting. Turn off the heated final rinse and the extremely inefficient dry cycle (which turns electricity, very inefficiently, into heat and essentially burns the water off the upward-facing bottoms of your mugs). Instead, when the wash cycle stops, turn the cups right-side-up by hand, so the water can drain off the bottoms. (Tip: before loading the dishwasher, scrape the dishes into the compost and let them sit in a small amount of soapy water for five minutes—then the lighter settings will be adequate and you want accidentally bake on food residue. This is especially important if it takes you several hours to fully load the dishwasher.)

• Washing machines: Set the default to light wash, cold water. If you’re dealing with soiled diapers or a kid who loves to jump in mud puddles, adjust upward.
• Toilets: If you have the European-style toilet with heavy and light flush settings, keep it set to light (or just use the light-flush button).
• Appliances, televisions, and computers. Plug them into smart power strips—or plug them into regular power strips and keep the strips switched to off when not in use. This will save money and energy, reduce fire hazard, and add only microseconds to power-up time. Good candidates: toaster ovens, microwave ovens, televisions (which are major power thieves when left idling in standby mode), computers and peripherals. In our house, where computers are used constantly, we power them up in the morning and then shut down and flip the power strip off before bed. That’s usually at least six hours of inactivity where we’re not consuming electricity.
• Room heaters: keep off unless you’re in the room.
• Programmable thermostats: In winter, set for 60 degrees F/15.5 C at night and during the times of day when the house is empty, 65 kicking in just before you wake up or return home. And set your own internal thermostat to stay warm by putting on a sweater and slippers or grabbing an extra blanket at night before reaching to turn the heat up. If it was good enough for President Carter in the White House, it’s probably good enough for you. (But if this is an alien concept, lower the temperature gradually, starting at about 70 F/21 C, and knocking it down a couple of degrees every few days, as your body acclimates.) In summer, if you use air conditioning, try it at 78 F/25.5 C. If the air temperature outside is 90 F/32.2 C, you’ll still feel nice and cool when you step inside.
• Refrigerators: Keep your refrigerator at no colder than 36-38 F/2.2-3.3 C and freezer around 5 F/-15 C.
• Showers: Set for the lowest flow and water temperature that provide a comfortable shower.

Your thinking: This is maybe the most challenging, but has the biggest impact. Learn to think as a conservationist. For instance, remind yourself each time you shop to take the reusable bags out of the car. If you have to retrain yourself by leaving your full cart and walking back to the car to get the bags, do it. For us, a few months of walking bag in the middle of shopping got us in the habit of taking the bags in the first place, and now, it’s become our “default.”

In short, the potential to save money, energy, and carbon emissions is all around you, if you reprogram your devices, and your brain.

Shel Horowitz, shel at greenandprofitable.com, shows you how to "reach green, socially conscious consumers with marketing that has THEM calling YOU." He writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical columns and is the primary author ofGuerrilla Marketing Goes Green (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).