I grew up with a chemist, otherwise known as my Dad. He has a PhD in Chemistry. If you think it was easy to live with one of the smartest people you have ever known, think again. He could never quite understand how I could make a living in the land of creativity and art. Lucky for me, I do get to tap into his knowledge bank whenever I deem necessary.
His name is Vernon Barham and here is a quick link to his past: Discover Magazine
Recycling—his passion—it’s almost close to an obsession.
I asked my Dad do some research in regards to if using recycled paper really is more environmentally friendly than non-recycled paper. My belief was that it takes less money and resources to create paper from virgin resources vs. collecting paper, re-pulping, bleaching, and milling all over again.
How wrong I was. Following is my Dad’s response and a nice article supporting his statement, certainly giving us a lot to think about at PUNCH.
He stated that he supports using recycled paper for “the simple reason being that it is less costly and more environmentally efficient to reuse paper than to go through the wasting of tons of water, not to mention the non-cellulosic part of the original trees used to make original paper.”
“In fact, most of the new investments for at least the past 20 years in the pulp and paper industry are not the old large capital intensive mills that spew both air and solid waste into the environment (remember the Franklin and Emporia plants). Paper manufacturers find it more economical to put in ‘mini mills’ which they can rework/recycle magazine stocks offering better and in many cases less costly products.”
Article Supporting Dad’s Statement:
Paper Information and Resources
Recycled Paper
Recycled paper is the end product of paper recycling. The production of recycled paper has significant environmental advantages over virgin (non-recycled) paper production, including less impact on forest resources, less air pollution, less water pollution, less water consumption, less energy consumption, and less solid waste. (To compare the environmental impacts of specific types of recycled and virgin papers, use the Environmental Defense’s web-based Paper Calculator.)
Recycled paper is produced in most varieties that virgin paper is produced, with quality generally equal to virgin paper. Prices for recycled printing and writing papers are generally slightly higher than for virgin printing and writing papers, because of a much smaller economy of scale for recycled paper production. In fact, recycled papers still comprise less than 10 percent of the printing and writing market.
“Buy recycled” programs are those that encourage or require consumers to purchase recycled products. In the case of paper, buy recycled programs are essential to increase the economy of scale for recycled paper production so that recycled paper can compete on a “level playing field” with virgin paper.
Well, parenting is never easy and one hard thing to do is to nurture. Really. It doesn’t just mean being nice. When your child creates something, you can’t fix it to satisfy your own standards. You may as well be saying, “You are NOT good enough”. And you’d never say that. I know how you are. I say this so that I can explain why I have foam cat cutouts on the cats’ food dishes and lots of handwritten (and creatively spelled!) signs around my house. (Yes. They are taped. To the walls, doors, mirrors, windows…..) I prefer to think my child is developing her sense of style and contributing to the decor in our home. She is exploring the new written world and she has tools now, baby!