Paper Recycling Coalition, Inc

The Paper Recycling Coalition

The Paper Recycling Coalition, Inc. represents the interests of the 100% recycled paperboard and containerboard industries. As a net negative emitter of carbon dioxide CO2e, this industry is a leader in sustainability. For every ton of 100% recycled paperboard produced, 3.17 tons of CO2e are avoided. The Coalition consists of nine companies with 50,000 employees in facilities located in 43 states. The Mission of the Paper Recycling Coalition is to protect the U.S. recovered fiber supply from market distorting government subsidies and costly government regulations.
Paper and paperboard recycling is one of our country’s greatest environmental success stories. The amount of used paper recovered for recycling has nearly doubled since 1990. Over 63.5% of paper and paperboard materials were recovered in 2013. This is more than three times the amount of glass, rubber, plastics, metals & textiles collected.
The goal of the PRC is to ensure that government policies and programs do not thwart the continued expansion of the domestic recovered fiber supply. Recovered fiber markets are complex, efficient, and dynamic and not enhanced by regulations or other approaches to specify the use of recycled fibers or dictate what type of recovered fiber is used in products. The markets are also even more disrupted if the government creates incentives for alternative uses of recovered fiber.
Since 1990, The Paper Recycling Coalition has educated policy leaders, legislators, regulators, and others about the 100% recycled paper industry. We meet regularly with Members of Congress and their staff as well as government agency staff. We work closely with environmental groups and other industry organizations to advise them of our industry’s interests and concerns. We conduct tours of recycled paper facilities to give regulators, legislators, and the media a close-up view of our operations. We also testify before Congress and regulatory agencies on issues of importance to our industry.
More paper and paperboard is recovered for recycling than any other packaging material. Additionally, the industry continues to explore ways to increase the recovery rate through advocacy and outreach programs encouraging consumers to recycle paper and paperboard packaging. Paper can be recycled up to seven times!

Our Members
Members of our coalition are leaders in recycling. We are true recyclers—the companies that take old materials and use them to make new products. Through paper collection programs, paper mills, and manufacturing facilities throughout the United States, coalition members manufacture 100% recycled paper that is turned into a wide array of products. From pizza and cereal boxes, mailing tubes and shipping cartons to book covers, game boards and puzzles, these 100% recycled paper products are a part of our everyday lives.

100% RECYCLED PAPERBOARD

100% recycled paperboard is a high-quality product used in packaging and other consumer and industrial products that have been made from recovered paper collected for recycling.
In our mills making 100% recycled paperboard, no trees are used. Instead, we make our pulp by mixing paper with water. Like an extremely large blender, rotating fins in the pulper reduce the paper to individual fibers, producing a paper slurry.
The pulp is then washed and refined. At this stage, contaminants like small pieces of glass, staples, plastic, and any other non-fiber materials that were mixed in with paper are removed .
The clean paper slurry is then moved through the paper machine on a series of screens. As the pulp travels, water is drained away from the slurry. The remaining paper fibers are pressed with rollers and dried to form large sheets of paper. Because our products are used by some of the most demanding companies in the world, every effort is made to assure the highest quality. Computerized sensors and state-of-the-art control equipment monitor each stage of the process to ensure that the paper meets or exceeds all standards, including the thickness and smoothness requirements of the consumer. As the paper exits the machine, it is either stacked in large sheets or wound into large rolls.
The 100% recycled paperboard is sent to a printing plant or a converting facility where it is transformed into a box, core or tube, fiber can, folding carton, overnight envelope, or other consumer or industrial product.

Environmental Benefits of Paper Recycling Rigorous scientific research has demonstrated that manufacturing paper with recycled content is good for the environment.

• Producing recycled paper requires less energy than producing paper from trees.
• By recycling paper, we prevent it from being landfilled where it degrades, producing methane, a greenhouse gas. According to the U.S. EPA, landfills are the single largest U.S. source of methane emissions to the atmosphere and degrading paper 24 times as potent as carbon dioxide is a primary cause.
• Manufacturing with recovered paperboard cuts down on air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog and particulate emissions that cause respiratory problems.
• Producing recycled paperboard and containerboard also requires less water and energy.
• Members of the Paper Recycling Coalition use approximately 7.2 million tons of recovered paper annually.

Economic Benefits of Paper Recycling 

• During the 1990s alone, U.S. papermakers invested an estimated $10 billion in new recycling capacity.
• Recycled paper, paperboard, and deinked market pulp mills employ nearly 140,000 people directly and influence another 615,000 jobs, for a total of nearly 755,000 jobs nationwide.
• The annual payroll of recycled paper, paperboard, and deinked market pulp mills is $6.9 billion.
• Through taxes and other receipts, recycled paper, paperboard, and deinked market pulp mills contribute $9.6 billion to federal, state, and local government revenues.
• Members of the Paper Recycling Coalition have approximately 500 mills in almost 300 different cities, spread throughout 42 states.