Handout 4C - Diagram

HANDOUT
4C
LABELING A DIAGRAM
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 30-41 which are based on the Reading
Passage below.
A Paper is different from other waste produce because it comes from a sustainable
resource: trees. Unlike the minerals and oil used to make plastics and metals, trees are
replaceable. Paper is also biodegradable, so it does not pose as much threat to the environment
when it is discarded. While 45 out of every 100 tonnes of wood fibre used to make paper in
Australia comes from waste paper, the rest comes directly from virgin fibre from forests and
plantations. By world standards this is a good performance since the world-wide average is 33
per cent waste paper. Governments have encouraged waste paper collection and sorting
schemes and at the same time, the paper industry has responded by developing new recycling
technologies that have paved the way for even greater utilisation of used fibre. As a result,
industry’s use of recycled fibres is expected to increase at twice the rate of virgin fibre over
the coming years.
B Already, waste paper constitutes 70% of paper used for packaging and advances in the
technology required to remove ink from the paper have allowed a higher recycled content in
newsprint and writing paper. To achieve the benefits of recycling, the community must also
contribute. We need to accept a change in the quality of paper products; for example
stationery may be less white and of a rougher texture. There also needs to be support from the
community for waste paper collection programs. Not only do we need to make the paper
available to collectors but it also needs to be separated into different types and sorted from
contaminants such as staples, paperclips, string and other miscellaneous items.
C There are technical limitations to the amount of paper which can be recycled and some
paper products cannot be collected for re-use. These include paper in the form of books and
permanent records, photographic paper and paper which is badly contaminated. The four most
common sources of paper for recycling are factories and retail stores which gather large
amounts of packaging material in which goods are delivered, also offices which have
unwanted business documents and computer output, paper converters and printers and lastly
households which discard newspapers and packaging material. The paper manufacturer pays a
price for the paper and may also incur the collection cost.
D Once collected, the paper has to be sorted by hand by people trained to recognise
various types of paper. This is necessary because some types of paper can only be made from
particular kinds of recycled fibre. The sorted paper then has to be repulped or mixed with
water and broken down into its individual fibres. This mixture is called stock and may contain
a wide variety of contaminating materials, particularly if it is made from mixed waste paper
which has had little sorting. Various machinery is used to remove other materials from the
stock. After passing through the repulping process, the fibres from printed waste paper are
grey in colour because the printing ink has soaked into the individual fibres. This recycled
material can only be used in products where the grey colour does not matter, such as
cardboard boxes but if the grey colour is not acceptable, the fibres must be de-inked. This
involves adding chemicals such as caustic soda or other alkalis, soaps and detergents, water-
hardening agents such as calcium chloride, frothing agents and bleaching agents. Before the
recycled fibres can be made into paper they must be refined or treated in such a way that they
bond together.
E Most paper products must contain some virgin fibre as well as recycled fibres and
unlike glass, paper cannot be recycled indefinitely. Most paper is down-cycled which means
that a product made from recycled paper is of an inferior quality to the original paper.
Recycling paper is beneficial in that it saves some of the energy, labour and capital that goes
into producing virgin pulp. However, recycling requires the use of fossil fuel, a non-
renewable energy source, to collect the waste paper from the community and to process it to
produce new paper. And the recycling process still creates emissions which require treatment
before they can be disposed of safely. Nevertheless, paper recycling is an important
economical and environmental practice but one which must be carried out in a rational and
viable manner for it to be useful to both industry and the community.

Handout 4C - Diagram

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Handout 4C - Diagram

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Handout 4C - Diagram

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

HANDOUT

You might also like