Virgin Pulp and Recycled Pulp
Pulp is a clean, wood-based raw material. It can be used to manufacture paper and various paper-based products while making them truly sustainable bioproducts at the same time. Let’s compare two types of pulp: virgin pulp and recycled pulp.
Virgin pulp and recycled pulp are two types of pulps that are made to manufacture paper. Produced by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from woods or fibre crops. Virgin paper is the kind of paper that does not contain any recycled content and is made directly of the pulp of trees or cotton. This kind of paper is also considered to be a high-quality paper.
Recycled pulp is made of used paper which has been processed by chemicals, so the inks will be removed with other unwanted elements and freed the paper fibres. Recycled pulp is safe to use as a raw material in paper manufacturing. Most of the facial tissues, toilet tissues and newsprints grade commonly contain 100% recycled pulp and in many other grades. Recycled paper is the kind of paper that was made from paper and paper products that have been used before and recovered.
The Difference Between Virgin Pulp and Recycled Pulp
The papers produced with recycled pulp cannot be as sustainable as the ones produced by using virgin pulp since in the recycling process fibres weaken and shorten. As a consequence of that, the recycled pulp can be used for a limited time. So, paper manufacturers have to use virgin pulp in order to maintain the paper cycle.
The production of recycled pulp is harder and relatively more expensive than the production of virgin pulp. Usually, the production of virgin pulp consists of three steps which are logging, milling and distribution.
On the other hand, the production of recycled pulp has more steps which are paper collection and recovery, pulping and deinking. These steps take more time and require more money. But in order to keep our green areas alive and decrease environmental pollution, we need to recycle and use papers made of recycled pulp.