The Laundry: Paper Recycling at its Very Best
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA 
on 08.27.07
We’ve covered the awesome work of the London-based Bioregional Development Group many times before, including their One Planet Living initiatives, and their pioneering housing development BedZED. We’ve even interviewed the founders of the group, Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone. However, so far we have focussed very much on the organization's work with housing, yet it’s less well known that the group has also developed imaginative and effective solutions for radically greener ways of doing things in a whole range of other industries. Their paper recycling operation, The Laundry, is just one of these schemes that both increases the uptake of paper recycling considerably and greatly reduces the emissions involved in the recycling process at the same time. The idea is part great marketing, and part intelligent planning. Participants in the scheme can leave their ‘dirty laundry’ (i.e. waste paper) out in blue laundry bags, which are picked up and ‘cleaned’ – i.e. the waste paper is taken away, and fresh, 100% recycled paper is delivered in its place. This already tackles one major problem with traditional recycling – i.e. if nobody buys recycled products, there’s nowhere for the waste to go. It doesn’t end there though…
Because the folks at The Laundry also ensure that the paper is processed and recycled locally, participants really do get back a proportion of the same paper that they actually recycled – closing the ‘loop’ and ensuring pulp isn’t shipped half-way around the world to be reprocessed in China. According to the Bioregional Development Group, this process results in a whopping 93% reduction in the ecological footprint associated with paper making when compared to virgin pulp. However, even that isn’t enough to satisfy the brain-boxes from BedZED – they’re now making moves to convert their collection fleet to 50% biodiesel, and they have also been investing in carbon offset schemes for remaining emissions. For full details of all the cool green stuff the Laundry is doing, check out their Green Bits page – we’ll bring more news of other fantastic Bioregional projects in the coming days. ::The Laundry:: via The Bioregional Development Group::
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Forget Going Green Because It's the Right Thing to Do—Go Green to Make Your Neighbors Jealous
- Can You Recycle Teflon Cookware?
- Does Recycling Really Make a Difference?
- Are Your Floors Covered in Pesticides?
- 5 Reuses for: Watermelon
- 5 Reuses for Altoid Tins
Is there a financial incentive for doing this? Are they getting "free" recycled paper? I don't see how this is any different than many city recycling programs.
Interesting... but what about the economics of this proposal? Seems to be completely absent from this article. What type of paper is "returned" to the "customer". Is the recycled paper purchased? How much energy is used in recycling the paper?
A clever idea.. but not one that could ever achieve scale I doubt...
--------
Author's comment:
The scheme has been running for a number of years now, so it looks like the economics of it are pretty sound. I believe the recycled paper is purchased, as it would be from a regular stationary supplier. This basically adds an extra source of revenue to the recycling operation, in terms of retail sales, and ensures a market for its core product. Seems pretty simple to me. As delivery is made to the same place as pickup, the overheads should be lower too.
However, you are right to suggest that there are challenges to scaling this idea up. I talked about this scheme with the founders a few years back at a conference, and they suggested that it is only really viable, in the UK at least, where a recycling facillity already exists. Unfortunately at the time of discussion, there were only two mills making recycled office paper in the UK, one being the one in the South East used by The Laundry, the other being in Scotland. The one in Scotland has since closed down. Apparently building a recycling plant would involve investment of HUGE magnitude, so they weren't hopeful in the near future. However, as fossil fuels get more expensive, the economics should swing in favour of such localised solutions, so it is great to see people working on such things anyhow.
In terms of the energy involved in recycling, I believe it would be the same as in any other recycling plant, and this was taken into account in their footprinting models. The 93% reduction in emissions includes all energy involved in manufacture, so I am presuming a huge part of the savings is in the massive reduction in transport involved. Knowing Bioregional though, they may have also encouraged the mill to adopt renewable energy and/or efficiency measures. We'll see what we can find out about this.
Great frickin' ideas!
Thinking sustainbly outside the box (at least in 2006) is a touch subversive, which makes it more fun.
It's great to be reminded of how to make an asset of this to get people involved. Also a good reminder that creativity is at the core of sustainability (and a lack of it is frequently to blame for wastefulness and pollution).