Paper Recycling

Georgia-Pacific (GP), Atlanta, has begun operations at its GP Toledo material recovery facility (MRF) in Toledo, Oregon. The MRF has applied GP’s Juno technology, which is designed to recycle highly contaminated recovered fiber and mixed materials.

Christer Henriksson, president of Juno Technology at Georgia-Pacific, says GP has been piloting Juno since 2013 at a plant in Savannah, Georgia, and began construction on its Toledo MRF about two years ago.

North Pacific Paper Company is pushing further into the recycled paper market, adding a new drum pulper that will support an existing 400 mill jobs and produce recycled packaging papers from waste material previously sent to China. “We’re excited to reach a big milestone in our work to achieve our vision of opening new markets, providing low-carbon, recycled packaging papers and retaining our talented, innovative workforce,” NORPAC CEO Craig Anneberg said in a prepared statement.

A Pacific Northwest paper mill has begun producing new grades of paper made from recovered fiber, a response to changing end markets and growing customer interest in recycled content.

Inland Empire Paper Company recently announced the new packaging sheet made from 100% recycled fiber and lightweight bagstock paper made from at least 30% recycled fiber.

The products will lead to an uptick in recovered material consumption at the Spokane, Wash.-area pulp and paper mill, which has long used recovered fiber but has used less over the years due to quality concerns.

The Paper Bottle Company (Paboco) wants to help manufacturers and distributors reduce their single-use plastic waste by creating bottles made from degradable plant sugars rather than fossil fuels. BillerudKorsnäs, a paper packaging developer, first started this initiative in 2013, and has been joined by research companies and industry leaders like Avantium and ALPLA. The project proudly announced in October 2019 that Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, and Absolut had joined their efforts.

The Willamette Falls Paper Company — formerly West Linn Paper Co. — has endured global crises before, including two world wars and the Great Depression.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, which has turned much of the global economy on its head, the industrious crew at the 130-year-old paper mill is looking to the future.

Continue Reading at the West Linn Tidings

North Pacific Paper Co. (NORPAC), Longview, Washington, is expanding its Longview operations to transform recovered paper into 100 percent recycled papers for boxes, displays, bags and a variety of other packaging products.

According to a news release from NORPAC, the expansion will help solve a difficult environmental challenge resulting from changes in the state’s ability to export recovered paper for recycling, which has sent tons of valuable material to landfills instead. Converting that material to new paper will also safeguard about 400 jobs at the mill.

The list includes new paper mills along with existing mills that are closed or are still operating but are being converted to produce different end products (e.g. from newsprint to packaging).

It also includes two mill that will be using recycled feedstock other than OCC and RMP. One is a facilty desigined to produce paper pulp and plastic pellets using beverage cartons and aseptic packages as its primary feedstock. The other is a mill designed to use food contaminated paper from commercial sources. 

The mills are listed in rough order of their projected opening.

The past week brought several significant recycled paper capacity announcements, indicating future domestic outlets for mixed paper and OCC.

• Shipping pulp from Kentucky to China: A Chinese company that purchased a U.S. paper mill will install a 700,000-tons-per-year recycled pulp and paper operation, taking in mixed paper and OCC and shipping the output to China for packaging production.

EPA Releases 2016 and 2017 Facts and Figures Data on Paper and Paperboard

EPA publishes data annually to its website on material generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery and landfilling in the United States for a variety of materials and products.

Several paper mills are expected to open new facilities or expand capacity for residential mixed paper by the end of 2019 into 2021.