Paper: Burn or Recycle?

[MrZebra]

I have a wood burning stove. I store up all the junk mail, cardboard boxes and so on, and burn them on the stove. It saves energy on a few counts: the energy required to heat my house, the energy required to transport the paper to the recycling plant, and the energy required to recycle the paper.

I recently burnt off a whole load because it was starting to pile up. It kept my living room warm all day. Although it saves me some money on my heating, is it the best thing to do?

[franbee]

Best thing for who, MrZebra? Obviously burning them is best for you, and in your place I would do the same.

[MrZebra]

Best thing for who, MrZebra? Obviously burning them is best for you, and in your place I would do the same.

You are right - I purposely didn't state who it would be best for, to avoid prejudicing the answers.

[Rustic Pumpkin]

I dispose of paper in different ways, mostly recycling now that we get curb side recycling. However, after hearing that the LA sends it to India (!) for recycling, I am having my doubts about continuing. Some paper I burn, I have a garden incinerator and everything that has personal information on it gets burned after shredding. This is then spread on the flower side of things, not on the vegetable side of things. Plain brown paper without inks and printing gets composted. If I had the joy of a woodburning stove then that is where all my burnable paper would go and the wood ash for the garden. But how does the burning of coloured paper fare with the toxin levels that are in coloured inks?

Glad somebody has found a way to keep warm!

[Clunkshift]

I live within 5 miles of a modern recycling plant but I also shred all important documents - and guess what, shreded paper cannot be recycled.

So we burn some but recycle what is collected.

[MrZebra]

It sounded so weird that you can't recycle shredded paper that I had to look it up. Apparently there are a few reasons, the main one being that the fibres that make up paper are quite long, and shredding destroys them, so any new paper made from shredded paper would be weak (low grade). Other reasons being that it's messier, bulkier, and more difficult to sort and handle.

[eleanor2]

we have a big log burner.we use most of our newspaper to get the fire going.with recycling and burning we only had half a wheely bin after a month over the christmas period.that saves on bin liners in the kitchen , black bin bags in the dustbin and waste been ferried to the tip or incinerator.the fire heats up a large radiator upstairs which i dry washing on.the fire gets that hot it warms all through the house nearly.so central heating is either switched off or on low.economy all around.just keep forgetting to make toast on it.

[jazzactivist]

We used to use the paper in our woodburning stove, but since moving to a house that doesn't have one I put some in the recycling bin and the envelopes with addresses on are shredded and added to the compost bin. Seems to work fine for us.

[Crocus]

Do you think that items produced from recycled paper are just as strong as "new" paper?
I'm asking this because I find that recycled paper tears much easier. Especially paper bags at our local shop's bakery are produced from recycled paper but it tears SO easy, I've had French loaves ending up on the floor quite a few times because the moment you put the loaf in the bag, it just starts to tear underneath, or at the top, sometimes both sides at the same time!

Do you find this happening? x

[Ivy]

Actually it is forbidden in Germany to burn printed paper (newspapers, magazines adverts) because the print often (if not always) is toxic and by burning it you set the toxins free and spread them all over the country. I don't know if this is really true or just in the interest of the recycling companies). Where I live, each household has a paper recycling bin that gets emptied once a month. Bin and collection are free for us so I am quite happy with that. But when in the country (where we have a wood-burner) we always use newspaper to get it going but recycle the rest.

Crocus my pet-hate is recycling toilet paper.......

[Crocus]

Yes we also recycle every tin, plastic bottle or container or whatever, all paper. I fully agree with you on the recycled toilet paper Ivy - oh dearie me!

But I do find paper bags made from recycled paper not as strong. Whether it's a coincidence I'm not sure.

[Crocus]

Okay, I'm beginning to wonder about recycled stuff, in this particular case, recycled paper bags. I bought a french loaf and the paper bag (white this time) just started to tear at the slightest touch. Also the next paper bag tore which really makes me wonder about recycled paper. Even the recycled plastic bags we use for recycling plastic, bottles and paper tear, especially when it's a bit heave laden Fibres degrade when paper is recycled, even more so when it's recycled repeatedly, and it seems that white paper bags might be of a 'poorer' quality when recycled than brown paper bag, but of course I may be wrong.

Is it just here that this happens or do you also find this happening?

[souter girl]

MK has an excellent recycling scheme where cans/plastic/paper are collected in a pink bag each week, glass in a blue box and food and garden waste in a green wheelie bin and other waste in a black bag all on a weekly basis. We shred a lot of paper then put it out for recycling, trouble is shredders seem to burn out so easily. Wish we could just incinerate it!

[Crocus]

Yes, that will be good if one could incinerate it. The "rule" here is to add all plastic, paper, glass and tins in one bag, they collect on Thursdays and they sort and recycle. Which I think is time consuming. Why not allow us to have four bags, and do the sorting ourselves? We had reports in the past that once it's been collected, all these bags get dumped in one heap, and no recycling being done! There were quite come outcries about this in our local village paper and it seems they got their act together and now do a proper job.

You get the same amount of bags you put out. At the moment we only have a filled bag every two weeks as boys are not here anymore. I've been thinking of saving up bags until I have four and then sort out the stuff myself, but it's going to take quite a while to collect four bags.

[dragonfly]

I would burn it if I had a fire. Most paper gets shredded and put in the compost bin. I heard that ink isn't very toxic so hope thats right.