Sustainability
There are upper limits on the percentage of the world’s newsprint that can be manufactured from recycled fiber. The most obvious upper limit is imposed by the nature of recycling itself. Some of the fiber that enters any recycled pulp mill is lost in pulping, due to inefficiencies inherent in the process. According to the web site of the U.K. chapter of Friends of the Earth wood fiber can normally only be recycled up to five times due to damage experienced to the fiber. Thus, unless the quantity of newsprint used each year worldwide declines to reflect the lost fiber, a certain amount of new (virgin) fiber is required each year globally, even if the individual newsprint mill may continue to use 100% recycled fiber.
Read more about this topic: Newsprint