Not so bright

Why you shouldn’t recycle that bright-orange paper 6

One of the thorniest questions I used to get as a recycling educator for the awesome grassroots recycling company EcoCycle in Boulder, Colo., was why ‘astrobright’ papers weren’t recyclable. You know this stuff: the super-dyed paper used by everyone from bands to Girl Scouts to make posters announcing their bake sales and death-metal guitar battles. It’s often bright orange, but also comes in every other shade imaginable.

The dye used to make these papers is so bright that it has the effect of washing your white clothes with one dark blue T shirt and are hence called ‘beater dyes’—they beat the paper recycling process and must be sorted out of the paper stream by recycling facilities and then burned or landfilled.

I called my pals at EcoCycle recently to see if the story has changed, but alas, it has not. We should all avoid their use. Bright yellow manila envelopes fall into the same category, I’m afraid. But what EcoCycle is telling its curbside customers and dropoff center users is to compost these papers with leaves and grass clippings. Better than nothing!

What to avoid: any brightly colored paper that is dyed throughout: tearing part of it will expose a white middle in papers that are OK to recycle. Pastel colored paper is the one exception, so use this for your posters.

In a country like the US producing an estimated total of 413 million tons of garbage generated annually, with only 28.6 percent recycled and composted, 6.9 percent combusted in waste-to-energy plants, and 64.5 percent landfilled (see BioCycle magazine’s 2008 State of Garbage Report), we should do all we can to ensure that the paper we use (post consumer recycled, please!) and recycle is the right kind. 

Erik Hoffner is the coordinator of the Orion Grassroots Network which supports the work of hundreds of grassroots groups and which connects the green leaders of tomorrow with good work today via the Grassroots Jobsource. Based in Massachusetts, he is also a freelance photographer.

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  1. Cacaoatl's avatar

    Cacaoatl Posted 2:24 pm
    02 Jun 2009

    What's this right kind nonsense? We're talking about paper here, not plastic where different kinds of plastic have different chemical reactions.  Is there some rule that paper has to be white? Why not mix all those brightly colored papers together? So what if it comes out some weird color from all the different dyes? I don't know about anyone else but it would be great for arts and crafts such as papier mache which is going to get painted over anyway. It could even marketed as such. There's a huge market out there for craft paper.

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  2. Cacaoatl's avatar

    Cacaoatl Posted 2:34 pm
    02 Jun 2009

    Really, is there some rule that computer printing paper or paper cup paper has to be gleaming white? Why must paper be white? Why can't we just accept weird colors of paper? It's that American hang up on consistency, isn't it?

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  3. Erik Hoffner's avatar

    Erik Hoffner Posted 6:14 pm
    02 Jun 2009

    Cacaoatl - dunno, but I can tell you that there's no mass market for pinkish grey copy paper, at least not yet. Would be hard on the eyes.Certainly in a post petro collapse world where people make their own paper in a solar powered blender, whatever color it was would just have to do...

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  4. Cacaoatl's avatar

    Cacaoatl Posted 6:24 pm
    02 Jun 2009

    There would be a huge market for blue-grey copy paper. I used to tutor school children and college students. There are a lot of dyslexics out there, a surprising number actually.  And printing homework assignments on other than white paper is actually an accomodation for dyslexia. For some reason dyslexics have a hard time reading things printed on white (something to do with the white light reflecting into the eyes) but they do fine with blue, grey, and blue-grey.  I wouldn't want pink-grey paper either but I don't need white.

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  5. masscommteach Posted 6:22 am
    03 Jun 2009

    We are being a bit narrow-minded in our definition of "recycle."In Nebraska, one of the biggest recyclers of paper is a company called Greenfiber, which makes blow-in insulation out of recycled paper, cardboard, and paper board. Greenfiber doesn't care what color of paper they receive. They will even take glossy magazines and paper-back books!For us they are local (which cuts-down on transportation waste) and even pay a small kick-back (based on tonage) to businesses and organizations that will host a recycling dumpster. Above all, they are creating a green building product (and jobs) in a region where the biggest green idea is turning perfectly good grain into ethanol to fuel their huge gas-gulping pickups.

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  6. Erik Hoffner's avatar

    Erik Hoffner Posted 9:00 am
    03 Jun 2009

    True, there are 'low grade' recycling programs out there, but not every community has an outlet like Greenfiber. This post is more general in terms of what recycling looks like in most places. Generally speaking, astrobright paper will be sorted out of folks' paper recycling and sent to a landfill.

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