Interesting Question - How much of the paper you buy gets recycled?

[mattf]

There is always waste in printing a job. Whether it be pre-press trimming, post-press trimming, overs and so on. I was curious as to see other printers paper recycled to paper bought ratio.

I'm actually crunching these numbers for my own company and it looks like we end of recycling a decent percentage of our paper that we use, probably in the 30% range. If my analysis pans out well, I believe I can use this data to help reduce the amount of paper we purchase which will reduce the amount of waste we generate. This will of course effect how we print jobs, which should be interesting to figure out.

But yeah, anyone else out there know their companies ratio of paper recycled to paper bought? Might be interesting to check out

Note: This isn't percent of recycled paper you use for printing, such as 25% PCW and so on, but the amount of paper that is recycled during production.

 

[wildwhl]

We've never actually crunched the numbers - but I think nearly all of our trim off is recycled (if not all). One thing I realized last year - changing one of our standard signature sheet sizes reduced waste (and therefore recycling) of paper by more than 10% (overall - with just one sheet/format change!), and also increased productivity during trimming/stitching/less cleanup etc.

But your question is interesting - I'll have to take a deeper look into it.

WW

 

[mattf]

Got numbers:

35% of the paper we buy ends up getting recycled. This is mainly because we are doing short run print jobs while having only offset printers. Small 2 color work can easily have up to 70-80% of the work recycled because of overs.

I included all paper we order for production as well as office paper. Office didn't really add much, but it still was calculated. Corrugate and skids included in the stock that is ordered for production was included within that. All corrugate used for shipping wasn't included because we use 99% for shipping and almost never throw into our own recycling program. 1% wasn't quantifiable within a 5 million dollar a year print company.

I completely understand that 35% of the paper we buy ends up recycled because the company does short offset runs. With all the trimming from pre-press to post-press it does add up. This gives me a shoe in for a few ideas, but just wanted to share.

Edit: Interesting fact, We bought 1 million pounds of paper in 2007-2008. In 2008-2009, we bought 800,000 pounds. That is literally comparable to our reduction in sales

 

[jwilson@tracypress]

Our spoilage comes from a web newspaper press. 12 unit Goss Community with two 4 high towers and 4 black monos & one SSC folder.

6.32% start up as well as roll changes waste including the wrap or two we take off the roll per press.

We’ve been running around 6.32% for the past several months.

We’re a web press with a maximum of 6 rolls at 28” wide with a cut off of 22.75”.

The roll wraps as well as all spoilage go into the recycling bin out back. Last I saw we were getting around $0.02 lb for the waste.

We also recycle any other recyclable papers we don’t print as well (Preprinted inserts) and the clean roll end (without paper on them) about 20% of our roll usage.

 

[mattf]

Our spoilage comes from a web newspaper press. 12 unit Goss Community with two 4 high towers and 4 black monos & one SSC folder.

6.32% start up as well as roll changes waste including the wrap or two we take off the roll per press.

We’ve been running around 6.32% for the past several months.

We’re a web press with a maximum of 6 rolls at 28” wide with a cut off of 22.75”.

The roll wraps as well as all spoilage go into the recycling bin out back. Last I saw we were getting around $0.02 lb for the waste.

We also recycle any other recyclable papers we don’t print as well (Preprinted inserts) and the clean roll end (without paper on them) about 20% of our roll usage.

There's the divide. Web and Sheetfed printing are two different beasts. Web has the capacity to easily get around 6% waste total. Web is geared toward longer runs, which makes waste go down. No matter what happens, if you have 5 units at 50 MR each that leaves a total of 250 MR. That's huge on a run of 5000, but on a run of 200,000 its not.

I think now most of the waste percentage is around 5-40 percent. And of course it all depends on the press and how long your runs are.