20-Feb-90 10:34 Roni.Rosenfeld Re: Recycled Paper From: Roni.Rosenfeld@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Jeff Rosenblum is the recycling guru of CMU. He is a student who also hold a position with CMU's department of Environmental Health and Safety. His recycling email address is recycling+@andrew. I forwarded to Jeff the recent discussion about using recycled paper. Following is his response: -------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 17:41:13 From: ** Jeff Rosenblum ** Subject: RE: Recycled printer paper To: Roni.Rosenfeld@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Roni, Sounds like a great idea! I assume you are talking about 8 1/2 by 11 xerographic paper for your laserprinters. For that, there is (from what I know) three types of recycled paper: 1) Recycled paper made from 100% recycled fibres. This paper is usually fairly close to being white. 2) Recycled paper made from mixed virgin pulp and recycled paper, ranging from 25%-75% recycled paper. Again, this can be obtained fairly white. 3) Recycled paper made from 100% recycled fibres UNBLEACHED. This paper is usually a pleasant yellow or ivory shade of off-white. The benifit here is that bleach was not used in the process reducing the amount of water pollution necessary for the production of the paper. Problems with recycled paper is that fibres are often damaged in the recycling process, and the resulting paper having smaller fibres often lead to a higher occurance of printer problems. Also, recycled paper CURRENTLY is usually a little more expensive than virgin, because of the small market for it. Hopefully in the future the price will become competitive. This is not meant to discourage you at all! I really think it is a great idea to use recycled paper, especially for programming where high quality whitness of the paper is not necessary. Green-bar and white form-feed computer paper is also available in recycled paper, in the same categories as above. If you want names of companies and distributers of the recycled paper, let me know and I can gather together information for you. Take care and good luck! -- Jeff -------------------------------------------------- [End of Jeff's letter] I suggest we ask Jeff for the list of companies and suppliers, contact them, and then see whether it is feasible for us and whether it is worth the extra expense. We can order small amounts of the different types of paper and experiment with them. --Roni 20-Feb-90 11:58 Mark.Kantrowitz Re: recycled paper From: Mark.Kantrowitz@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Xerox and Canon laser engines require SMOOTH paper, and usually have strict tolerances as far as thickness. Recycled paper may not meet these requirements, leading to frequent jamming and breakdowns. Recycled paper tends to shed more, gumming up the works. Also, recycled paper has different ink absorption properties than virgin paper. Surprisingly, this makes a difference even for static fusing printers like laser printers. Before stuffing recycled paper in the xerox machines and printers, call the company which services the machines, and find out (1) if using recycled paper is a violation of the service agreement, (2) what specifications the paper must meet. Even if they say there's no problem, run it for a few months on a test machine. --mark 21-Feb-90 14:34 Duane.Williams Re: recycled paper From: Duane.Williams@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU CS/RI owns lots of Apple Laserwriters, which are capable of handling envelopes and sheets of mailing labels. It is hard to believe that they are designed with "strict tolerances as far as thickness" if they can print on envelopes, although it is true that envelopes don't follow the same path as paper fed from the paper tray. (I also doubt that the paper we use in our Laserwriters was recommended by Apple.) It seems to me that rather than speculate about whether we can use recycled paper in our printers, we should get some and try it. It seems to me that this could best be done in a controlled manner by operations, if they are willing. I've got a catalog from Earth Care Paper, Inc. (608-256-5522) that lists a 20# Bond white paper (order # 1400 white) for dry toner plain paper copiers. It is 50-70% recycled paper. This company will negotiate pricing on very large orders (> 200 reams). They also refer their customers to manufacturers or other distributors if they can't supply an order. This is just one company that I am aware of. My mentioning them here should not be construed as a recommendation, since I haven't done business with them -- yet. 27-Sep-90 13:37 Marco.Zagha recycled paper From: Marco.Zagha@ENQUIRER.SCANDAL.CS.CMU.EDU At Thinking Machines Corp., they use recycled paper for the copiers and printers from Hammermill. It's 50 percent recycled. They say it hasn't jammed any more than the regular paper. This is just one small data point, but maybe we should contact one of the paper suppliers and see what they say about reliability and paper quality. == Marco 28-Sep-90 18:31 Erik.Altmann Recycled paper sources From: Erik.Altmann@NATASHA.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU From the Tartan (24 Sept 90, p 10): "One outstanding source for recycled paper products is a mail-order company called Earth Care Paper, Inc. (PO Box 3335, Madison , WI 53704 (608) 256-5522). This company publishes an excellent catalog that is a recycler's dream, with superb prices including quality discounts and fast delivery. For more information about receycling efforts nationwide, call the Environmental Defense Fund, (800) CALL-EDF." Erik. 03-Oct-90 10:03 Doug.Philips More Recycle Info From: Doug.Philips@LADON.RESDOC.CS.CMU.EDU In case this isn't common knowledge, there are several other suppliers of recylced paper materials. Earth Care is one of the most expensive for tractor feed continuous computer paper, but I understand that $/page may not be the only criteria. (I haven't priced copier paper.) Quill carries recycled paper. 708-634-4800 (orderd), 708-634-800 (cust. service) Lyben carries recycled paper. 313-649-4500 BIO-PAX, a division of Diversified Packaging Inc. carries recycled paper and has an environmental program. 301-974-4411 I post these numbers for anyone who wants more information. I have no connection with any of those companies except as a customer. -Doug P.S. Maybe this kind of info should be available in the bovik database? A quick search of misc/recycling shows only messages about where to take materials to be recycled. misc/office-supplies doesn't have anything about where to get recycled paper/office supplies. 22-Oct-90 15:03 Marco.Zagha "fake" recycled paper From: Marco.Zagha@ENQUIRER.SCANDAL.CS.CMU.EDU I got this from someone at Thinking Machines warning about "fake" recycled paper: Be careful when ordering stuff though - the latest scam in the recycled paper business is to call the stuff that was traditionally mill waste and/or scrap as recycled paper. This is stuff that was either never used before now or was traditionally used for something else besides paper. Make sure that it "post-consumer" recycled and NOT "post-commercial" or "pre-consumer" recycled as the difference is important - the post-commercial stuff being the wrong stuff to buy (your just paying for someone the sweep the floor better...). An example of post-commercial is the cuttings from the production of a book. An example of post-consumer is the book after someone has bought it, read it, and recycled it. The kicker is that the "fake" recycled paper is more expensive then either straight or consumer recycled paper, and getting the straight story is very difficult - you must really pin down the words that are being used. == Marco 27-Sep-90 12:11 Rudy.Nedved printers and paper From: Rudy.Nedved@RUDY.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU Re: Recycled paper ------------------ No information seems to be readily available about the trade offs between recycled paper and whether you can recycle it again. If anyone has clear documentation or articles discussing this, I personally would like a copy. As far as we know, recycled paper frays sooner and leaves much more paper fibers laying around in the print engine area increasing the time to failure and rapidly degrading the print quality. CS has for many years recycled paper and I believe DEC5 handles it. The biggest problem apparently is people leaving plastics (overhead transparencies) and newspaper in the high grade paper. From a service standpoint, the number one problem is print quality. Smudges, streaks, dots, fading, etc are constantly being mentioned as impacting people's ability to send out papers, books and articles. Anything that makes the print quality worst would be a step in the wrong direction. The CS department has to find better ways to handle things. Maybe it is time to keep track of paper printing for people and somehow charge them accordingly? Or have the top 10 list of paper users? We will definitely be checking out recycled paper. It cost less but if we use it for everything will this be unacceptable to people?