Buildings & Grounds Maintenance

The Stanford Recycling Center's Buy Recycled programs focus on encouraging the use of recycled paper and products at Stanford.

In 1998, Stanford used an average of 13,500 reams of 8.5 by 11" paper in an average month.⁽¹⁾ This amounts to 81 million sheets of paper in a year or about 5,770 trees. Purchasing recycled paper will greatly reduce our impact on the environment. Recycled paper conserves forests as approximately 42% of trees harvested nationwide end up as pulpwood for pulp and paper.⁽²⁾ Recycled paper also saves energy and water and reduces pollution. Producing recycled paper takes 60% less energy and 58% less water than producing virgin paper and produces 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution.⁽³⁾

Paper that is collected for recycling is sorted according to the type of mill that will use it. Most recovered office paper can be sent to a de-inking mill, which separates the ink, coatings and other extra materials from the paper fibers. The fibers are then sent to a paper machine to be made into new paper.

Even virgin paper mills have always recycled their internal scraps and many also recycle clean scraps from businesses that convert paper into envelopes, reams, and other products. A few paper mills have the capacity to de-ink printers' scraps. Reusing this pre-consumer material is an economically sensible part of the production process and proves that recycling works.

But the vast majority of paper ends up in people's homes and businesses, where 90% is discarded within a year. This post-consumer paper is more diverse, with characteristics such as copier toner and a variety of adhesives that are not found in pre-consumer scraps and are much harder to recycle. Most of this post-consumer paper used to be brought to a landfill or burned, losing its potential for repeated recycling, and local governments had few markets for selling the recyclable office and household paper they were collecting in community recycling programs. Now many government and business purchasers require post-consumer content in their recycled papers. Most recycled papers now have some post-consumer content but there is still significant room for improvement, more than 90% of the market still uses virgin paper and even recycled papers could include much higher post-consumer percentages.

In addition to purchasing recycled paper, it is easy to reduce your paper use by using double-sided copies and printing drafts of documents on the blank side of paper that has already been printed on once.

Common Myths About Recycled Paper

1. Recycled Paper Jams Copy Machines
   Today's recycled paper is high quality and technically perfected for use in copiers. If the paper jams in a copier, it is not because of the recycled content. It may be that the ream sat opened for a long time and absorbed moisture. Sometimes people use paper that's not formatted for copiers. Use paper qualified as "high-speed" for high-speed copiers. The machine may need cleaning or adjusting. You can always try another brand of recycled paper, just as you would try another brand of virgin paper. Kinkos uses recycled paper. Several Stanford departments also successfully use recycled paper, including Anthropological Sciences, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, German Studies, History and Science, Technology and Society.
2. Fibers in Recycled Paper Create Too Much Dust in Machines
   Excessive dust comes not from recycled fibers but from inadequate production processes or incomplete vacuuming of cut paper sides. Buy high quality paper to avoid such problems.
3. Recycled Paper is Hard to Find and More Expensive
   It is quite simple to buy recycled paper at Stanford because several brands of recycled paper are currently included in the university's campus wide purchasing agreements. Simply search for recycled paper using the term search in Stanford's SmartMart. Recycled paper is even cheaper than virgin paper as Xerox 8.5 by 11'' 20 lb recycled paper (XER3R6296SU) costs $2.53 a ream and Eureka recycled paper (EUR06172) costs $3.30 a ream, compared to the $3.33 a ream for the cheapest virgin paper.
4. Recycled Paper is Lower Quality
   In the 1980s, recycled paper was often of uneven quality, sometimes appearing tan, gray or spotted. But today recycled paper is available in all colors, including the brightest whites, and meets the highest technical standards, sometimes even exceeding comparable virgin papers.

Sources:

(1) Stefani K. Fukushima, Buyer, Procurement Department, Stanford University.
(2) David Assman, Recycling and Hazardous Waste Program Manager, City and County of San Francisco, November 1999.
(3) Benefits of Recycling, Californians Against Waste Foundation.
The section on making recycled paper and all of the myths except the Stanford specific information are from the Buy Recycled Business Alliance's fact sheet on recycled paper.

For information on buying recycled products at Stanford, go to Buying Recycled Products