Paper Recycling Conference: New Specifications Unveiled

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) and its Paper
Stock Industries (PSI) Chapter have included a new grade known as #36 File Stock in its newest specifications circular.

As summarized at a session at the Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, Grade #36 is expected to often be a shredded grade produced by the document destruction process. It may include up to 4 percent prohibited materials and up to 10 percent of materials considered outthrows.

Prohibited materials can include metal paper clips and staples as well as plastics found in report covers and in other filing applications.

Outthrows can include carbon paper, photographs and pressure-sensitive labels such as mailing labels. According to Roy Geigel of Fox River Fiber Co., a Wisconsin producer of recycled-content pulp, the pressure-sensitive labels are the most commonly found outthrow in this grade.

Geigel served on the PSI subcommittee that helped define the #36 grade and he presented a summary of the new grade to Paper Recycling Conference attendees.

Ralph Simon of SP Recycling Corp., Atlanta, who has been involved in grade specifications oversight for many years, reviewed recent and proposed PSI changes for attendees.

According to Simon, a new grade to be known as Residential Mixed Paper (RMP) is working its way through the review process. The RMP grade as currently proposed would have a 2 percent prohibitives limit and a 10 percent outthrows limit.

As its name implies, the RMP grade would be generated primarily by municipal recycling programs that serve single-family homes and apartment buildings. It would often result from single-stream collection followed by mechanical sorting. “It is a grade that is, in fact, already being traded around the world,” said Simon.

At the same PSI-sponsored session, Maite Quinn of Sprint Recycling in New York noted that residents in that city have become confused by the city’s temporary suspension of its container recycling program. “[Some] people thought recycling was over,” she noted.

For a recycler such as Sprint that concentrates on buildings in Manhattan, Quinn says the challenge is that “every single building in New York City is like a separate city,” with different programs in place and varying quality levels.

The 2006 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, organized by the Recycling Today Media Group, was held June 25-27 in Chicago. Next year’s conference will be June 10-12, 2007, in Orlando.