Recycled Copier Paper - Is It Worth It?

Needless to say we all want to do our bit for the environment. Buying recycled paper is one of those things that we could be doing, but, in short, is it worth it?

1. It's better for the environment. For every 20 cases of recycled paper you use, over non-recycled paper, you save around 17 trees, nearly 400 gallons of oil, 7000 gallons of water and masses of electricity. Recycled paper also tends to use less harmful chemicals in its production.

2. It's high quality. The quality of recycled paper is now equal to the quality of almost all non-recycled papers. Gone are the days of brown faded pages that jammed up printers and copiers.

3. It's easy to get hold of. Recycled paper is now commonplace with most stationery and consumables stockists, like Whistle Ink, carrying a range. Commercial printers will also have a range of recycled papers for you to choose from for things like direct mail, printed envelopes and brochures.

4. Your customers care. Savvy customers are increasingly taking the green credentials of their suppliers seriously. Buying recycled paper can help demonstrate your commitment to protecting the environment.

Buying recycled paper is only one step in doing your bit to help the environment - but it is a start.

Whistle Ink stock EP4 and Evolve recycled papers.

There are a few steps involved:

1) Great quantities of water is added to the 'scrap' paper to create a pulp which is then cleansed through 'screening' and 'centrifugal cleaning'. Any dense or larger than the pulp fibres is removed.

2) The next step is to remove the ink and colours. 'Flotation' or 'deinking' pass air bubbles through the pulp, and the ink collect with the foam on the surface.

3) To remove further the ink and colours and make the paper whiter, peroxides and other chemicals are used to bleach the pulp to the desired brightness.

4) The water used in this process is cleaned ready to be used again.

5) The unusable material left over, mainly ink, plastics, filler and short fibers, is called sludge. The sludge is buried in a landfill, burned to create energy at the paper mill or used as a fertilizer by local farmers in some cases.

1) The copier paper that you have photocopied something on just because or the laser paper that you printed that PDF document on because you prefer to read it on paper rather than screen that you - turn it over and what do you get?

Another side to the piece of paper! You can use this. Cut it up in half and make a nice note book / telephone message pad by holing the papers together with a bull dog clip.

2) There are two sides to everything - even copier paper - SO USE IT! Sorry didn't mean to shout.

If you can and especially if you are printing in draft or things just to read a few times - print it both sides. PowerPoint presentations can also be printed or copied on to both sides reducing the number of pages used!

(Side note: I don't understand why copies of the presentation get given out before the presentation - no one pays any notices - maybe a attention diverting tactic by the nervous?

3) The tale of two bins%u2026. One bin was for cigarette packets and crisp packets and sandwich packaging and chocolate wrappers and well you get the picture. The other bib was for recycling!

Granted there could be two bins one for straight recycling and the other for confidential shredding and then recycling.

Many people in your office? Keep a bin next to the printer - Job Done.

Get some shredders: Have a couple around the office and it will encourage shredding as well as replacing the water cooler as the main meeting gossip exchange point. (Expect you won't be able to hear things and the shredder whirs!)

4) Need to print that email? I mean really? Serious? Sure?

Sometimes some things just don't need to be printed in the first place. If you need to file - can't you file it on your computer. Using 'Print to PDF' software such as Primo PDF means you just select the document that you want and select the 'printer' from the printer menu and then hey presto the document is now a PDF document that you can store in a new appropriately titled folder on your computer.

Need to show someone something? Print to PDF and email it, send them the link! Recite it to them word for word.

I came across a blog the other day which read that prices for recycled copier paper were more expensive than normal new paper because of demand.

The idea that demand would create the volume which would then cause the price of recycled copier to go down.

This does make sense I guess. So the challenge now is to gt people to pay that bit extra for their paper and go recyled paper and this will help drive the price down further.

There aren't many wholesalers of office supplies in the uk and they each sell their own brand on virgin and recycled copier paper.

Because both are priced around the same price what would happen if they stop selling the virgin paper and instead only offered the recycled copier paper?

The 5 Star Copier Paper is Manufactured using FSC pulp from mixed sources - so is obviously more 'environmentally friendly' than their other copier paper which is from virgin pulp.

It's not marked as being so as such and therefore not many people would know - would they even notice the difference?

Also the purpose of value copier paper must at that price point must appeal to a different type of use than said 100gsm premium white paper that would cost almost double?

• High quality multipurpose recycled paper made from 100% reclaimed material


• Delivers reliability and peace of mind to the busiest organisations


• No problems with double-sided printing or copying, no jams or costly stoppages


• Guaranteed for use on all mono office printing applications


• 80gsm


• Size: A4


• Packed: 500 sheets

Evolve Office Recycled Copier Paper comes directly from Europe and more importantly from 100% genuine waste paper.

They even have their own waste water treatment centres, reusing and recycling the water used during the process of recycling paper.

Evolve Recycled Paper is as bright as virgin paper because of the quality of the waste paper used.

This process excludes newspaper and cardboard (classed as low grade paper) and so the whiteness is retained. There are Optical Brightening Agents used. Evolve does have office copier paper which hasn;t been treated with OBA too.

Evolve is produced at a mill accredited to ISO 14001, which is the internationally recognised standard for environmental responsibility and management.