Eco audit: buying recycled paper

You get through a lot of paper when you’re studying.  Working in an office.  Teaching.  Whatever I seem to do, there is paper in my wake. The paperless office is still a far distant concept, for most workplaces.

So how did my teenage environmentalist respond? Buy recycled paper.  Reuse paper where possible.  And when you’ve got all the use out of that bit of paper – recycle it.

Let’s start with those in reverse order.  Recycling paper – again much easier than it used to be.  They’ll give you a bin to put it in, they’ll come to your door.  And it’s not just writing paper they can take – paper packaging too, if it’s clean.

That means things like paper wrappers on the outside of some chocolate bars. Paper bags you get in supermarkets for mushrooms.  Labels from tin cans.  Let alone flyers that come through the door, old magazines, what’s on leaflets, and so on.

If you’ve got a compost heap, some of it can go there.  If you’ve got a food waste recycling system of your own, bits of kitchen roll that have been used for wiping up food can go there too.  So far so good.

(Of course, not everyone has a compost heap – let alone a food recycling system.  I’ll probably say some more on those another time.)

What about the reusing bit? Fairly OK.  It’s become familiar practice in many offices to have bins for ‘used on one side’ paper, and it’s great for jotting notes on.

I use it for shopping lists, to do lists, moments when I need to do a diagram to prove how many Star Wars films Obi Wan Kenobi appears in.  (And at what age.  Parental responsibilities, you see.)

It can get trickier when the printing on one side has personal information.  Easier if you are in an office, and have access to shredding collection services.  (Yes, we can buy shredders for use at home.  Yes, I seem to have gone through two already, and they don’t seem to cope with larger amounts of paper.)

So, I’m feeling fairly good so far.  Then I remember where I came in: buying recycled paper.  School: good.  University: generally good.  Later on: not always so good.

Recycled paper from the 80s and 90s, when I was mostly buying for notes, was generally browny-grey.  Distinctive, good for identifying with visits to Germany and buying it there.  But yes, less beautiful under the hand and the pen than new paper.

In the present day, I seem to have slipped into the trap of picking up pads of A4 paper (for the occasions where I do buy new) and not thinking too hard about where they come from.   I don’t use them much, but I can think about changing this when I next buy.

Recycled kitchen roll, recycled loo roll – generally OK to get.  And, more recently, easier to get non-bleached baking parchment for baking cakes with.  In fact, that last item actually feels more satisfying to bake with.  It’s nice to see your finished item (hopefully brown), nestled in a mid-brown from the baking parchment.

It would help if I could cut the amount of flyers for takeaways that come though the door.  (Can I do mailing preferences for that?)  But then I could turn them into logs (so I discover) a) if I have a fireplace and b) if I want to burn paper.  Hmm.

I could turn newspapers into plant pots for planting out seedlings?  That one seems better.  Although we have been reducing the papers and magazines that come into the house, over the last few years.  So actually I don’t have much newspaper at home.  Unless I take home the copy of Metro from the bus that would have otherwise ended up under someone’s feet.

Audit result: could do a bit better on the new paper.  Fine on reuse and recycle – but the hardest one is to reduce.  That’s also the one to work on.  Good job all these words are going online, rather than on paper, as I write this.