Recycled Paper
There is justifiable concern about the sustainability of using disposable products. First it is important to bear in mind that all the timber for paper production comes from softwood forests, such as those in Scandinavia and Canada. In these areas, trees have been "farmed" for over a century, and such forests now cover a bigger acreage than they did in the 1920's. No hardwood rain forests are being cut down to make paper.
The collection of waste paper has been growing rapidly in recent years, and the majority of our tissue products contain either 100% recycled fibre, or a very high proportion of it. Much of this movement is driven by the paper manufacturers, who often have their own collection companies, because the production costs of recycled products are generally lower, and they can sell them more competitively. You will often find that our cheapest products are 100% recycled, although there are occasionally periods of recession when the price of virgin pulp dips below the recycled cost. Those of you who have ever been involved in waste paper collection, perhaps with a local charity, will recall times when you have to pay people to take it away!
There are some applications which demand the best absorbency (perhaps on a production line where the absorption speed is crucial) and freedom from "lint" - those little bits of dust you see sometimes when tearing recycled paper, and we have items in the list which fulfil this need. Recycled pulp comes out of the machine a dirty brown colour, so it has to be either bleached or coloured to make it more acceptable to us sensitive souls, although we do have a couple of brown rolls which havn't been tampered with, in the range.
In terms of performance, the total absorption of a recycled product will not be too different to a pure pulp product, but the speed of absorption will be much greater with virgin pulp. The colour may vary from batch to batch with recycled paper, because the quality of the waste used (offfice paper, newsprint, cardboard etc) will inevitably never be exactly the same, and may depend on what is available. That said, the differences are rarely noticeable to the untrained eye.
We source many of our products from two mills whose products all comply with the latest EU directives, and have environmental policies on a par with the best. We have highlighted some of the products which carry the EU's "Ecoflower" accreditation. The only downside with this award is that is that a commission has to be built into the cost of every case to keep the EU flunkies in the style to which they are accustomed.
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