Europe Looks to the US Postal Service PSA Project with Great Expectations, 2000 Recycling Symposium Proceedings

E. A. Krauthauf --The recycling of recovered graphic paper has developed very rapidly in Europe. Parallel to the increase of the usage of recovered graphic paper the collection had to be developed at least at the same speed. The extra volume of recovered paper had to be collected from households and thus the cleanliness and the composition changed considerably. The deinking plants had to learn how to adjust their equipment to this new challenge. Problems were caused in pulp and paper manufacturing processes by thermoplastic materials which could not be removed by available standard screening technology. The ever increasing content of PSA in recovered graphic paper has led to considerable problems in deinking pulp mills. One of the earliest demand of all deinkers to publishers and printers was to use only PSA which do not break up into small particles when processed in a deinking plant and which can be removed completely from the deinked pulp by screening. In Europe, there was not a large organization like the US Postal Service which had a green program, a commitment on one hand and the buying power on the other hand necessary to form an alliance with adhesive suppliers to develop screenable PSA. European deinkers are looking to this development in the US with great interest.