When paper is recycled, how do they remove things like sticky tape,cellophane,staples & cope with thick books?

Question

I know they aren't supposed to enter the recycling bin, but of course they will.
The volume of the material must be such that effective manual removal of such 'contaminants' is impossible, so how do the machines do it?
No one would want staples in their recycled loo-paper(!)
or the remains of sticky-tape in the middle of their daily newspaper.

Answer 1

The Fiber Recycling Process :

Taken from:http://www.recoverusa.com/paper_recycling.htm

Fiber recycling is a specialized process in which office wastepaper is used to produce clean, recycled pulp that can be used to make recycled content paper and paperboards.

Wastepaper from office, school and business recycling programs is collected by outside waste-management companies that sort the waste and then sell it in bales to the mill.

The wastepaper is mixed with water and chemicals, and reduced to pulp slurry in a giant blender called a pulper.

Following pulping, the pulp mix is diluted with water and passes through a system of centrifugal cleaning equipment and screens. This is done to remove large contaminants like wood, plastic, rocks, glass and paper clips, along with small contaminants like string, glue and other sticky materials.

The pulp is pressed to remove water and dissolved inks, and is then fed into a kneading machine. During kneading, the pulp fibers are rubbed against each other, further loosening the inks, while kneading chemicals are added to begin the brightening process. Brightening the pulp counters any yellowing affect sometimes seen in paper containing wood fibers like those used for newspaper. The fibers soak in chemicals for about three hours in a storage chest. The pulp that went into the brightening process gray and dirty in appearance comes out much whiter and cleaner.

The fibers are then sent through a fine screening process that removes any remaining glue particles and small contaminants.

The pulp goes through an ink removal process. Here the pulp is mixed with chemicals, called surfactants, that suds up like washing machine soap. Ink particles, dirt, glues and other very small contaminants adhere to the suds and float to the surface where they are skimmed away leaving the pulp even cleaner.

The pulp is then washed, pressed, kneaded and placed in the decolorization chest. A chemical is added to remove any colors that might tint the pulp.

The pulp is then washed again to remove any remaining ink particles, fillers or other contaminants.

The finished recycled pulp is then either sent to a mill for papermaking or it is formed into sheets of pulp, called "wet lap," for shipment and sale.

Answer 2

I once met the bloke from the recycling company, just as I was putting my waste paper in the skip. He told me that the first thing they do is dump the lot in a huge vat of water so that all the paper disintegrates. Metal clips and staples sink and windows (from envelopes) and sticky tape just float to the top and are skimmed off.
As another responder has said, magnets and filters do the rest.

Answer 3

first it all gets sorted by hand. then it is soaked in big chemical vats to take out all the inks, glues and other stuff that shouldnt be in there. the heavy debris sinks to the bottom of the vats, the rest like plastik floats to the top and is skimmed off. then what ever makes it through is agitated to make the fiberes more loose and so that they will bind together better. new paper fibers are added with the old ones and then there turned into what ever there supposed to be turned into.

Answer 4

Recycled TOILET PAPER? Heck no, I'm not ever going to use that. yeah, it's going brown all right. Geeez people want to save the earth and the best they can think of is Re using TOILET PAPER? Gross.

Answer 5

Everything like that just gets put in the landfill unfortunately :(

Answer 6

Heat, water, magnetics.

Answer 7

people actually do the dirty job