Print Production

Recycled paper is bad for the environment.

I feel slightly embarrassed about my ignorance regarding this subject.

I did often wonder why it was so expensive and not much of a success.

Re-use seems to make a lot more sense than "re-cycling". Re-cycling paper is a very expensive and wasteful process. Everytime you throw your paper into a recycle bin you are actually helping to hurt the environment. The treatment of old paper requires lots of heavy grinding, chemical bleaching to remove the ink, chemical bleaching to make the paper a specific colour, spraying, and then cutting. Who knew? Not me unfortunately and I am guessing a lot of other people. It makes perfect sense in retrospect. Re-cycling can actually be a waste of human and natural resources.

Re-use must be the way forward, using and consuming less. However to actually make a difference wouldn’t we have to go to such lengths as bringing a sealable glass jar to the butchers? Not eat meat? Making your bags from old bedsheets? Leaving the plastic in Tescos? The packaging will still be there but won’t you have done your bit? Returning milk bottles to suppliers for refills? Finding a milk supplier who uses glass bottles?

My fear lies in the fact that it may be too late however much I hope it’s not. I can’t believe that the world is changing or becoming a better place and I can’t see everyone suddenly seeing the light resulting in consumerism halting to an abrupt stop. I am more inclined to believe that as predicted by (WWF) The World Wildlife Fund, that the world will run out of natural resources by 2050 and we will have to colonise two planets in order to survive. Designing for this eventuality could also be an interesting thing to explore.

Carol.