How Is Recycled Paper Made?

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Lynn Bestul. I'm the solid waste planner for New Hanover County in North Carolina. I'm here today to talk to you about how paper is made, how recycle paper is made. I'm going to show you in a small scale, however, manufacturers are the major improvement than what I've got here. This is the basics of how a recycled paper is made though. You start out with wallpaper, old paper, you shred it up and pile it up. You can use different types of colors. You take that paper then into a blender, shove it all into the blender and then take another fifty percent of the height of the paper and add some hot water in there. You can turn the blender on, once you, you run it for probably about fifty seconds and it should turn into a pulp type material. It'll be liquid with some clumps in it, soft clumps. You put that into a tub and then this is a frame that is made, you can make or you can just use an old, wooden picture frame and staple actual screen into it to dip into here. You just dip it inside all the way through, push the pulp on to the top of the screen and then you would pick it up until the water, most of the water drips through the screen. Once that happens, you would take that screen and spread the, laid off to the side, put the paper side down on the ground and you can gradually peel the frame off the fresh paper then you just cover that paper up and you can take a roller to smooth it out, just let it dry and then once it's dried, you can slowly peel it off either newspaper or fabric. Once that's done, your end result is recycled paper. Of course, manufacturers are a lot better paper. This does give you the concept of how it is made though. Those are the facts on how to make recycled paper."