Turning yesterday's news into tomorrow's headlines...how does Aylesford Newsprint do it?
- What happens when you've finished with the latest copy of Bliss?
- Can FHM really be turned into a Sunday Supplement?
- Exactly how many magazines are needed to make the recycling process work?
- What happens if we don't recycle?
You may have clicked on this page to find out more about the Aylesford Newsprint recycling progress. Anyone who cares about the world they live in should be interested in the effects our activities are having on daily life. Let's face it, we all know that there is need for change because resources are scarce and need to be used prudently - without care it could be an environmental time bomb ticking away in the background.
The good news is that a simple action, like recycling your used newspapers, really does make a difference. But how does it all work?
Remember watching Playschool, Playdays or Teletubbies (according to your age!) and watching how they made items like Wellington boots, glass and chocolates - well sit back and read the following and with a little imagination you'll understand how we turn your used newspapers and magazines into a completely new product.
First - a word of warning - Aylesford Newsprint is a working paper mill and therefore before we enter we ask you to pay attention, put on your ear defenders and please don't wander into any unsupervised areas.
We first stop in the reclaimed fibre store - this is where all the used newspapers and magazines arrive from around Southern England. The paper is collected either from your house or from recycling banks that you find outside supermarkets, public car parks and other similar locations. It may have been stored in a local warehouse or distribution centre before being brought into our mill - normally on an articulated lorry. These then unload into one of the store's four bays and during this unloading we check it for quality. To make publishing quality paper we need clean, contaminant-free material - that means no cardboard, yellow pages, plastic bags, food waste, etc. Taking care at the start of the process enables us to make a higher quality product.
The store has a capacity of 10,000 tonnes and needs 8,000 tonnes of used newspapers and magazines every single week - that means we recycle more than 1,000 tonnes a day. That's approximately 28 large truck loads a day and that is a lot of newspapers and magazines!!
With large amounts of recovered paper we need to keep things moving. There are two Volvo loading shovels continually feeding the material onto conveyors for pulping. When the paper reaches the pulpers it is mixed with water at a temperature of 50°C and sodium silicate. Each pulper is a little like a giant washing machine and this is the first stage of 14 stages of cleaning! This is also where the largest unwanted items are rejected from the process.
From each of the pulpers the paper (now called 'stock') moves onto the fibre preparation plant. Be warned, it's a lot warmer in here. First the stock goes into the centrifugal cleaners. These are like a series of spin dryers which remove smaller contaminates like stickies, staples, grit and small stones.
The stock is then pumped over to large de-inking cells where the ink is removed. Here it gets a bit technical - the stock is mixed with fatty acid soap, and air is pumped into the water. The ink sticks to the bubbles which rise and with the calcium in the water, forms a scum on the surface which is floated off and mechanically removed.
The stock then goes into two presses where for water removal and the consistency rises to 30% fibre. At this point hydrogen peroxide is added to whiten the fibres and the temperature is raised to 85°C. This assists in cleaning any remaining adhesives or residual glue from the material.
The stock is then placed in a bleaching tower for 15 minutes, and diluted to 1% fibre to water. It then passes through cleaners and washers, ending up at wire presses where it is finally ready to be made into new paper.
Obviously the cleaning of used paper creates lots of dirty water. Throughout the process we recycle the water until we can no longer do so and then we send it to our water treatment plant for cleaning. In the treatment plant the dirty water is fed with macrobiotic organisms which simply consume the unwanted materials, so that the water is discharged in a clean condition. Once the water has been removed we are left with sludge made up of the fibres which are too small to make paper, the removed ink, and unwanted solids such as magazine fillers. This sludge goes to a combustor which generates 15% of the energy needed to run the mill. The ash resulting from this process is increasingly being recycled.
Back to the main process - the stock is now stored in a large silo waiting to be made into paper.
Newsprint is manufactured on a paper machine that is over 120 metres long at a speed faster than an H. G. V. lorry is legally allowed to travel on a motorway. PM14 set the world speed record of over 62 miles per hour for Newsprint manufacture. And, by employing the very latest operating and monitoring technology, it is virtually un-touched by human hand.
In simple terms, the stock consisting of 0.7% fibre and 99.3% water, is sprayed on to the rollers and is taken up to the top of the machine, where it is trapped between two belts of fabric. The water is squeezed out evenly from both sides and the fibres lock together to form a very wet sheet of paper. This is then dryed in various ways and leaves the 'wet end' at about 50% water to fibre.
Moving along the process to the 'dry end' the paper is passed over 31 rotating drying cylinders to evaporate most of the remaining moisture. When the paper emerges from the part of the process, it contains 9% moisture. Now you can see the importance of the earlier aspects of the process - what started out as discarded newspapers and magazines has become a bright white jumbo roll of paper.
Each machine roll is 9.4 metres wide and weighs between 30 and 40 tonnes - that's almost the same as 30 family cars!
And as soon as one roll leaves the machine, another automatically starts winding.
Samples of the paper are taken for laboratory testing to ensure high and consistent quality and the roll is transferred for onward processing. Any paper off cuts are sent back for re-pulping as nothing is wasted.
The machine roll is cut by rotary blades into smaller widths to the reel dimensions required by the newsprint customer. Reels are then conveyed to the packaging area by conveyors. Robots pick up protective corrugated ends and place them on the newsprint reels, after which the roll is wrapped in a protective sheet. Bar codes are applied and the reels are then transferred to the warehouse where a bar code reader identifies the customer prior to storage for later loading.
The high bay warehouse is a fully automated operation where computer controlled cranes store the paper reels randomly in positions situated along isles, so that they may be retrieved quickly for quick loading of Lorries.
Up to 9,000 reels can be stored in the warehouse and seven cranes find the correct reels for the customer and ensure that they go on the relevant lorry. Easy!
Just as impressive is the automatic lorry loading process. With loads being dispatched during most of the working week to customers both in the UK and mainland Europe, you'll doubtless see an Aylesford Newsprint lorry on route to a publisher sometime soon. And when you do; take a moment to think that just seven days ago you might have been reading a newspaper or magazine that has helped get that lorry on its way.
Even better, you've recognised your social responsibility and now understand exactly how it all works.