PAPER AND

SOLID WASTE
MANAGEMENT

BY Mark Henry, Orwin Austin and Kendrea King

What is Solid waste?
Solid waste can be any discarded or abandoned materials. The word Solid was said
to be a mismatch in that even thought the term is solid waste the waste can be
solid, liquid, semi-solid or even gaseous materials.
Paper
Who made the first Paper?
When was the first paper
made?
How do we define Paper?
The origin of paper traces back to 105 A.D when Tsai Lun,
who was an official at the Imperial Court in China at that time,
broke a bark of Mulberry tree and pounded it into a sheet.
Paper is defined as a thin, flat material made from crushed
wood or cloth. {Cambridge Dictionary}
Paper and its Products
From then to now, the recipe for paper making has travelled from
continent to continent as also the use of paper became more
widespread and globalised. To date, approximately 3-6 billion trees
are cut down for the purpose of paper making. When paper is
made it can be used to manufacture a variety of products which
can be grouped into five broad categories as follows:
Newsprint and Magazine
Printing and Writing paper
Sanitary and Household
Packaging Material and Products
Specialised papers
From each category, there is at least one product that generates a lot of
waste.
Considering the category of newsprint and magazine, everyday, and
infinite amount of papers are used primarily for communicating news.
Newsprint, being one of the poorer grades of paper can hardly be recycled,
however, can be reused and reduced.
If we look at Printing and writing paper, the way these are used in the
Education fraternity alone can create the picture of the amount of waste
generated by these only. For example, a class of 30 students has to
complete an assignment that can be written or typed and the average
assignment uses up 10 pages when typed and 20 pages when written. The
teacher/lecturer only needs to go through those papers once to assess each
student and whether it is returned to the student or left in the hands of the
lecturer, sooner or later these pages will be of no use and can now be
discarded. This is where the problem of solid waste management comes in.
Solid Waste Management
This refers to collecting, treating and disposing of waste material. So,
specific to paper; this would include collecting, treating, recycling as well as
proper disposal of paper products and materials.
Collecting- Paper is collected according to their grades. Some grades
include: old corrugated containers also known as corrugated cardboards,
mixed papers, old newspapers, high grade paper and pulp substitutes.
Treatment- This refer to the deinking or bleaching of the paper. That is,
removing all the ink from the paper which can be poisonous or in some
cases undesirable since the aim is to make white paper. Also, the filler and
coating is removed.
 Recycling- This is where the used paper is crushed up and blended into a slurry
using water, then thinned out on a flat mesh-like surface where it is dried and
pressed to remove all additional water. Once this is pressed, you have your
recycled paper.

Disposal- This is usually done as an alternative to recycling for different reasons.

Some areas do not have recycling plants so they use the discarded paper for
landfills or they burn the paper.
A closer look at the 3 Rs of conservation as
they relate to PAPER!

We can first establish that to reduce means to decreasing

the amount consumed and discarded. While to REUSE is
to extend the lifetime of the item, whereas, to recycle is
to take the old item, process it and crease something
else.
Reducing paper and its products
To reduce paper, we need to use less printed material, we
can demand soft copies where possible and in that way, less
would be printed, less paper would be used. Therefore, less
would have to be discarded.
Reusing paper and its products
We can reuse paper by simply taking printed documents
that are not of much importance anymore and making notes
with them. We can use cardboard boxes and store different
things such as books, garbage or items in them. We can also
reuse the boxes to repost items given that they are in good
conditions.
Recycling paper and its product
As aforementioned, we can take the paper that is not needed ay more and mix it
into a slurry, then thinning it out on a mesh-like material and pressing and drying to
make sheets of paper which can be carved into any paper product according to its
specification. This recycling method can be carried out on any grade of paper.
However, the product of the recycling process is of a poorer grade than that which
was used to do the recycling. This is because the fibres get weaker and sharper
every time they blend or grind to form the slurry.
The impact of paper on the
environment
Despite paper being biodegradable (can be decomposed). The period for which it
takes to decompose varies with newspaper taking some 2-4 weeks to decompose.