The Tricky Business of Recycling Paper

Today, Plenty magazine is answering hard-hitting questions on a very relevant topic: paper recycling. Actually, today the question is especially relevant in my neck of the woods because we have seen practically nothing but rain all day. Did you know that wet paper is exceedingly difficult to recycle? Neither did I until right now, but the article lays it out when this question is posed:

Q. I just read your response to “Can I recycle newspaper with art supply paint on it?” You said that once paper gets wet it is no good to the mills. Does that mean that all those bags/bundles of paper that people put out for recycling the night before pickup are no good for recycling if they got wet? Should we put out our recycling in plastic bags? – Susan Meles, NJ

The magazine responds:

A. Although we at Plenty are never, ever grouchy—not even when election day stress has all but put us over the edge and we’re about ready to take a sledgehammer to that car whose alarm has been blaring outside our NYC window for the past hour—we do have one thing in common with Oscar the Grouch. We love trash. We love treating it lovingly, and doing all sorts of loving and creative things with it—things like recycling, composting, and repurposing. And, yes, protecting it from the elements.

But why? Why do we have to protect our recyclings from the elements when they’re just going to get mushed up together anyway? I’ve been doing research all morning, and can’t find much more than vague assertions that paper must be kept dry or kept separate. The general idea seems to have something to do with wet paper turning to mush, getting all over everything else, and being much harder on the whole to pick up and work with. That said, Plenty knows the importance of not going overboard with your prevention procedures:

Don’t go overboard, though—you shouldn’t put your paper waste in a plastic bag unless your particular curbside program asks you to. Paper set out in plastic bags is likely to be confused with trash and sent to the landfill, which will totally negate all of your careful efforts to keep it dry. Anyway, a little morning dew won’t ruin the whole bundle. Your friendly recycler will probably just remove the wet outer layer in order to get to the remaining dry part.

The only thing that can make a bad situation worse? A disposable plastic bag. But we knew that already.

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.