Recycle Paper Quotes

[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.

One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.

He met his day in the shower, washing his hair with shampoo that was guaranteed to have never been put in a bunny's eyes and from which ten percent of the profits went to save the whales. He lathered his face with shaving cream free of chlorofluorocarbons, thereby saving the ozone layer. He breakfasted on fertile eggs laid by sexually satisfied chickens that were allowed to range while listening to Brahms, and muffins made with pesticide-free grain, so no eagle-egg shells were weakened by his thoughtless consumption. He scrambled the eggs in margarine free of tropical oils, thus preserving the rain forest, and he added milk from a cartn made of recycled paper and shipped from a small family farm. By the time he finished his second cup of coffee, which would presumably help to educate the children of a poor peasant farmer named Juan Valdez, Sam was on the verge of congratulating himself for single-handedly preserving the planet just by getting up in the morning.

The worst job in the whole world must be recycling toilet paper.

At the store, they have one-hundred-percent-recycled toilet paper," Marla says. "The worst job in the whole world must be recycling toilet paper.

We don’t burn our books, she says. We pulp them. Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet paper. Those books wiped someone’s rear end a long time ago.

LOTION have you ever received a gift that was placed inside of a box that was recycled from another, much more intriguing present? like, you pull back the pretty paper and you see iPad packaging, but then you open the lid, and inside is a lotion set? i meet a lot of people like that. exciting outside, disappointing inside. don’t be lotion.

Anathema didn’t only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. She didn’t compartmentalize her beliefs. They were welded into one enormous, seamless belief, compared with which that held by Joan of Arc seemed a mere idle notion.

When I was little, my brother drew an image for me on the train ride home from the academy. It was a map of Internment, only instead of the real city, he'd drawn a castle for the clock tower. And the buildings were all different somehow. Mysterious. And right at the edge he drew a ladder that went down and disappeared into the clouds. It was the most spectacular thing I'd ever seen, and getting ready for my bath that night, I discovered it had fallen from a hole on my skirt pocket. I wanted to go out and look for it, but my mother told me the sweepers had already come. The paper would be collected with all the other forgotten-about things and it would be compressed and recycled into something new. I looked for it the next day, anyway, to no avail. I couldn't believe such a wonderful thing could be destroyed so simply. I learned that it could. Anything could be destroyed.

If this had been a public-school locker room, there would have been some gray jumbo-sized garbage cans nearby, and I probably could've taken care of cleanup by myself. But apparently the girls of St. Andrew's don't throw anything away, because all they had was a tiny wastebasket and some recycling bins. There were bins for paper, plastic, and glass, but none for rotting corpses. Go figure.

By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.

At the store, they have one-hundred-percent-recycled toilet paper,” Marla says. "The worst job in the whole world must be recycling toilet paper.” I

At the store, they have one-hundred-percent-recycled toilet paper,” Marla says. "The worst job in the whole world must be recycling toilet paper.

Goldie?" Jack asked. "What is it?" "Jack, my water just broke," Goldilocks said. "I'm going into labor!" All the characters glanced at one another in panic. This was such an anticipated moment, but no one was prepared for it. They were characters from children's stories - none of them knew how to deliver a baby! "Quick! We need scissors, boiling water, and recycled paper!" Red shouted. "Or is that for papier-mâché?" Trollbella covered her eyes. "Keep it inside while I'm in the room!" she said. "I don't want to see a baby come out of you.!" "CALL THE MIDWIFE AND WET NURSE!" Robin Hood yelled. "BUT DON'T TELL THEM I SENT YOU!

We don’t burn our books, she says. We pulp them. Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet paper. Those books wiped someone’s rear end a long time ago. Oh, says Bird. So that’s what happened to his mother’s books. All those words

I judge myself by the shiny, pretty people I see at parent-teacher meetings, or on Facebook, or Pinterest, who seem to totally have their shit together and never have unwashed hair. They never wait until Thursday night to help their kid with the entire week's homework. They don't have piles of dusty boxes in corners waiting to be opened from the move before last. They have pretty, pastel lives, and they are happy, and they own picnic baskets and napkins and know how to recycle, and they never run out of toilet paper or get their electricity turned off. And it's not even that I want to be one of those people. I fucking hate picnics. If God wanted us to eat on the ground He wouldn't have invented couches. I just don't want to feel like a failure because my biggest accomplishment of the day was going to the bank.

The "old school" of wastewater treatment, still embraced by most government regulators and many academics, considers water to be a vehicle for the routine transfer of waste from on place to another. It also considers the accompanying organic material to be of little or no value. The "new school", on the other hand, sees water as a dwindling, precious resource that should not be polluted with waste; organic materials are seen as resources that should be constructively recycled. My research for this chapter included reviewing hundreds of research papers on alternative wastewater systems. I was amazed at the incredible amount of time and money that has gone into studying how to clean the water we have polluted with human excrement. In all of the research papers, without exception, the idea that we should simply stop defecating in water was never suggested.

For some reason, the doodles that she had drawn in her workbook came back into her mind. Only this time, instead of being black lines on gray, recycled paper, they were bright in her mind; very bright. And all kinds of colors, the way the sun appeared in your mind if you looked at it for a moment and then closed your eyes. Dozens of little suns: green and red and gold; then colors, too, that you couldn't even name. That was the way the lines looked in Candy's mind's eye. And they were moving. The wavy lines were rolling across the darkness inside her skull, rolling and breaking, the brilliant colors bursting into arabesques of white and silver.

Anathema didn’t only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rain forests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. She didn’t compartmentalize her beliefs. They were welded into one enormous, seamless belief, compared with which that held by Joan of Arc seemed a mere idle notion.

Even as the Blue Marble was miniaturizing your conception of Earth, it was inflating your sense of importance in relation to it, endowing you a godlike perspective and agency. The image caused, in other words, a derangement of scale, from which you people still suffer. As your anxiety about the disastrous effects of your behavior on the biosphere grows, you console yourself with the thought that by changing a light bulb or recycling a bottle or choosing paper instead of plastic, you can save the planet.

During the coming days, the wealth of America kept astonishing me. The television had programming from morning till night. I had never been in an elevator before and when I pressed a button in the elevator and the elevator “started moving, I felt powerful that it had to obey me. In our shiny brass mailbox in the lobby, we received ads on colored paper. In India colored paper could be sold to the recycler for more money than newsprint. The sliding glass doors of our apartment building would open when we approached. Each time this happened, I felt that we had been mistaken for somebody important.

Every year Grandma Ann (not blood related but our grandmother all the same) made extravagant paper hats out of recycled material; the mesh netting of pears, colored comics, indigo feathers, origami flowers. She sold them at street fairs and donated the proceeds to local organizations, including Grateful Garments, which provided clothes for survivors of sexual violence. Had this organization not existed, I would have left the hospital wearing nothing but a flimsy gown and boots. Which meant all the hours spent cutting and taping hats at the dinner table, selling them at a little booth in the sun, had gifted me a gentle suit of armor. Grandma Ann wrapped herself around me, told me I was ready.

For three thousand years it had been the concent’s policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo.

None were particularly interesting, although I got a kick out of a note from the Philadelphia Zoo suggesting that since the tiger was not entirely reliable around humans, perhaps Mr. Willing would consider a leopard for his painting instead. It had been a pet until the demise (natural) of its owner and would, if not firmly admonished, climb into a person's lap, purring, and drool copiously. I pulled a sheet of scrap paper (the Stars spent a lot of time sending all-school e-mails about recycling) out of my bag and made a note on the blank side: "Leopard in The Lady in DeNile?" It wasn't my favorite, Cleopatra Awaiting the Return of Anthony. It was a little OTT, loaded with gold and snake imagery and, of course, the leopard. Diana hadn't liked the painting,either, apparently; she was the one who'd given it the Lady in DeNile nickname.I wondered if the leopard had drooled on her. None of the papers were personal, but they were Edward's and some were special, if you knew about his life. There was a bill from the Hotel Ritz in Paris in April 1890, and one from Cartier two months later for a pair of Tahitian pearl drop earrings. Diana was wearing them in my favorite photograph of the two of them: happy and visibly tanned, even in black and white, holding lobsters on a beach in Maine. "I insisted we let them go," Diana wrote in a letter to her niece. "Edward had a snit.He wanted a lobster dinner, but I could not countenance eating a fellow model.

It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit. What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell — and in some cases, it would appear, sell— their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary. In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers ‘reported’ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established ‘facts’ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting — ‘journalism’ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21)

He was sitting on a bench with his briefcase open and was surrounded by enough product literature to keep a paper-recycling factory in business for months.

Sorry, Jericho. I almost didn’t recognize you with your dick in your pants. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get home.” I tried to flounce off, but walking in short steps with a paper sack around my hips wasn’t a graceful way to make an exit. He rolled the truck beside me and the engine rumbled, but he didn’t say a word. So I walked a little faster. He drove a little faster. Finally, I broke into a run. Jericho hit the gas and kept up with me. “Get in the goddamn truck, Isabelle.” “No.”“You’re a female wolf running naked in the street. Get in.” “I’m not naked,” I panted. “I’m wearing recyclables.” Dark, Dannika (2014-07-27). Five Weeks (Seven Series #3) (pp. 49-50). . Kindle Edition.

A massive bookshelf stood behind a deep burgundy desk that was better fit for a Fortune 500 company CEO than a twelve year old. There was a beautiful globe next to it, with Old English writing on it. It looked at least two and a half centuries old. The windows were frosted, the desk lamp was green and the leaning pile of papers on the desk looked like the recycling pastime of an obsessive compulsive stenographer. To the left was a beautiful oil canvas in which a small figure had been drawn on top of a mountain as he clamored towards the heavens while a lemon yellow sun hung on top of it. The arms were like a V reaching for the sky and in the foreground were no less than thirty bodies strewn across the basin in a sea of maroon below. “That was a gift from Edward Louis,” said the voice of the boy from behind Nathaniel. The young man hadn’t been frightened; he was more impressed that the child vampire had slipped in without allowing any noise from the hall to enter with him. “There was a time when he called me King Jeremy the Wicked. Mostly it was an endless jab since I wasn’t much for battles or slaughter. I might add that like many of you humans, I’d rather not know where my food comes from.

She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, ‘unforeseen circumstances’ had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he’s existed in a constant state of tension, braced against every moment as the one that might finally restore her. Even out of school, even on his own, shopping in the supermarket, sitting at the traffic lights, he finds himself holding his breath. But the days are a series of ghost pregnancies, delivering nothing.

Toddlers love toilet paper. I mean, I love toilet paper, too—who doesn’t? Even the most devout conservationist can’t live without their toilet paper. “Reuse! Recycle! Wait … What? We’re out of toilet paper? Chop down that forest! Fast!” But toddlers love toilet paper for all the wrong reasons. They have no idea what it is for or how to use it, but they are passionate about a nice, big, fresh roll of toilet paper. They love to play with it, wear it, eat it, and, especially, unroll it. Leave a toddler alone in a bathroom for five seconds, and they somehow unroll three hundred feet of toilet paper with supernatural speed. Then you walk in and bust them, and they just look at you like, “What? This stuff is obviously for me, right? It’s right at my eye level, and it’s the most fun thing in the house.” All the geniuses at the Fisher-Price laboratories have yet to develop something as fun for a toddler as a ninety-nine-cent roll of toilet paper. Unfortunately for me, whenever this unrolling happens, it’s always the last roll in the house. Have you ever tried to reroll an entire family-size roll of toilet paper? I just leave it in a big, undulating pile next to the toilet. I’m not going to throw it away. After all, it is still toilet paper.

He met his day in the shower, washing his hair with shampoo that was guaranteed to have never been put in a bunny’s eyes and from which ten percent of the profits went to save the whales. He lathered his face with shaving cream free of chlorofluorocarbons, thereby saving the ozone layer. He breakfasted on fertile eggs laid by sexually satisfied chickens that were allowed to range while listening to Brahms, and muffins made with pesticide-free grain, so no eagle-egg shells were weakened by his thoughtless consumption. He scrambled the eggs in margarine free of tropical oils, thus preserving the rain forest, and he added milk from a carton made of recycled paper and shipped from a small family farm. By the time he finished his second cup of coffee, which would presumably help to educate the children of a poor peasant farmer named Juan Valdez, Sam was on the verge of congratulating himself for single-handedly saving the planet just by getting up in the morning.

If only you would apply yourself.” My teachers in high school told me that so often that they decided to really drill it in by writing it in my yearbook, over and over. I was a bad student. Still am. Busywork was the bane of my existence—those little homework assignments that felt like a waste of time, that required organizational skills like Writing Down Your Assignment and Not Losing Your Handout. These were difficult tasks for me. My locker was a pile of loose papers that got more and more crinkly as the weeks went on until it looked like the inside of a recycling bin. I discovered that if you ignore something long enough, it really does go away. Literally. The papers would disintegrate. I would pass just enough tests and do enough begging to eke by with a D. Sometimes.

One of the more interesting work-alignment tactics I came across while writing this book was that of Sheryl Woodhouse-Keese, who owns an earth-friendly stationery outfit called Twisted Limb Paperworks in Bloomington, Indiana. Woodhouse-Keese put her headquarters on a ten-acre farm (her house is at the other end), and started growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, herbs, melons, and so forth. But, of course, there turned out to be a huge overlap between people who wanted to work at a recycled paper stationery company, and people who are interested in small scale, sustainable agriculture. So, quickly, the farm “turned from my personal garden into an employee garden,” Woodhouse-Keese says. Now, many Twisted Limb Paperworks employees take their breaks in the garden while pulling weeds, and load up bags of produce into their trunks rather than stopping by the grocery store on the way home. While the employees don’t necessarily use the garden as a social outlet or place for meetings (as Woodhouse-Keese points out, it gets hot in the summer), its existence lets everyone fit gardening into their lives in a way that might not otherwise be possible given how busy employees at small businesses tend to be.

Coffee Cups Every two minutes, people in the United Kingdom go through 10,000 coffee cups. However, what most do not realize is that these paper coffee cups are not recyclable. While most consumers assume that the paper cups are the more eco-friendly choice, most end up in landfills. Because the cups are not made from recyclable material, and they come in contact with the hot coffee or tea, they cannot be put with standard recycling. Technically, because the cups are lined with polyethylene, they

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women’s bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel’s annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe’s gout and her one—no, make that two—car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena’s divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn’t really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes.

Right Mindfulness: Practice keeping to basic requisites of food, clothing, accommodation and medicine. Make things last. Refuse to live with excess. When you go to the shops carry shopping bags from home and do not accept plastic bags. Keep packaging to the minimum. Give to charity shops and buy from them. Be mindful of what you wear in terms of the ethics of shops and clothing factories. Avoid companies that are known to sell goods made in ‘sweat-shops’ in developing countries. Be mindful and informed about all points in this Charter. Right Renunciation: Let go of desire for a bigger or better home. Have a spring clean in your home and see what you can give away or recycle. Support and develop love of minimalism and enjoy the outdoors in all weathers. Avoid shopping malls. Buy only necessities. Avoid impulse shopping. Keep out of debt. Offer dana (in the form of donations, time, and energy) to worthwhile projects and individuals. Right Sustainability: Be well informed about recycling; compost waste food and recycle paper,

When his association with L’Indice ended in December 1931—the paper apparently ‘went bust’—he intensified his effort to play an active part in the literary and cultural life of Italy by getting a local vortex going in Rapallo. With Gino Saviotti and half a dozen other collaborators, notably Basil Bunting, Pound organised a ‘Supplemento Letterario’ which appeared every other week as an insert in Rapallo’s weekly paper, Il Mare. For eight months, from August 1932 to March 1933, it was a two-page supplement, and then, from April to July 1933, was reduced to a single ‘Pagina Letteraria’. The promise that it would reappear in October 1933, after taking a summer holiday, ‘with, as always, the collaboration of the best Italian and foreign writers’, was not kept. In its first phase the ‘Supplemento’ was determinedly international, with contributions from and about Italian, French, Spanish, German, and American writers and writing, and could claim to be giving a local focus to the most innovative and avant-garde work of its time. Pound contributed occasional ‘Appunti’, and recycled his Little Review ‘Study of French Poets’ and his notes on Vorticism. In one of his ‘Appunti’ he asserted that Futurism, the best of which satisfied the demands of Vorticism, had to be the dominant art of ‘l’Italia Nuova’.

We’re a palimpsest—a sheet of paper that’s been reused and written over time and again, constantly being recycled.

When it's absolutely necessary, recycling is a better option than sending an item to the landfill. It does save energy, conserve natural resources, divert materials from landfills, and create a demand for recovered materials. Although it is a form of disposal, it provides a guide for making better purchases, based on the knowledge of what recycles best. When buying new, we should choose products that not only support reuse but also are made of materials that have a high postconsumer content, are compatible with our community's recycling program, and are likely to get recycled over and over (e.g., steel, aluminum, glass, or paper) versus downcycled (e.g., plastics).

My mom always used old newspapers to clean the outside of windows. This was way back before recycling was common, so it wasn't done for any "green" reason except it was cheaper than using paper towels.

Um, so you're in love with Frankie, right?" "Yes." "How do you know?" She thought about it for a minute, then said, "I'm happier when I'm with him. I'm stronger, more daring, more open. You know how when you're ten, you are so much who you are? When I was ten I was like the senior of being a kid. I was into sports, of course, but I was also into politics, I read the paper, I organized a recycling drive, I did cartwheels just because I felt happy. Didn't you?" "Well," I said, "I have never done a cartwheel. Maybe I've never been that happy." "No, you know what I mean. I was strong." ... "When I'm not with him," she went on, the words rushing out of her, "I think about him all the time- what he would think, or say, how he would calm me down and help me roll with it, whatever. And when I'm with him, it's just- easy. This might sound weird, but I'm more like I was when I was ten. Minus the cartwheels, plus a little, you know, different kind of physical stuff. I guess I know I'm in love with Frankie because I'm more like myself when I'm with him.

The paperback was compromise enough. And that’s what I’ve become: paper spine, paper limbs, brain of cheapo crumpled paper, the final type that publishers used before surrendering to the touch displays, that bad thin four-times-deinked recycled crap, 100% acidfree postconsumer waste. I have very few books with me here—Hitler’s Secretary: A Firsthand Account, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, whatever was on the sales table at Foyles on Charing Cross Road, and in the langues anglais section of the FNAC on the Rue de Rennes—books I’m using as models, paragons of what to avoid. I’m writing a memoir, of course—half bio, half autobio, it feels—I’m writing the memoir of a man not me.

I ended up back at the airport before dawn, drinking black coffee from a recycled paper cup and listening to the come-play-me chimes from a bank of slot machines in the concourse. Vegas’s farewell to the tourist traffic, suctioning out the last of their pocket change before kicking them back home. Every minute I spent here was a minute lost forever. I blew on my coffee and tried not to pace.

On March 12, 2015, the AIM Development Company, that deals in scrap metal, met to discuss demolishing the now defunct Verso Paper Mill in Bucksport, located at the head of Penobscot Bay. The paper mill was first built by the Maine Seaboard Paper Company in 1930. Demolition of the mill is expected to be completed in 2016. However, company representatives and town officials did not discuss what AIM might do with the 250-acre waterfront site once the demolition work is complete. Originally it was believed that a recycling facility, using the deep-water port access to export salvaged metals, would be the most likely thing to be built on this site; however this plan has now been scrapped. In 1980 this mill employed more than 1,350 workers and was the largest employer in Bucksport, a town of about 5,000 residents. The demolition and removal took much longer than anyone expected and as salvage crews continued working, a fire broke out on March 19, 2017. Apparently the fire erupted at about 8:30 a,m. as workers using cutting torches, cut into the metal exterior wall of the mill. Spreading to the roof of the building, it was debated as to the feasibility of allowing the fire to destroy the remaining structure. Considering the safety involved firefighters from Bucksport and surrounding towns extinguished the fire. It is expected that the remaining remnants will be demolished by the middle of 2017 in fact the company has open rail cars in position, waiting to remove whatever is left of the mill.

In the past, perhaps because of memories of the depression in the 1930s and early 1940s when most people had nothing, the greatest generation and the younger Baby Boomers grew up accumulating stuff. It probably started with functional stuff like furniture, kitchenware, and clothing (and shoes!) Later, it expanded into collections of useless but art-driven stuff like coins, postage stamps, and records. During World War II, there were paper drives to create the recyclable pulp that could be used to support the war effort, and millions of magazines and comic books were completely destroyed every week. It wasn’t until the war ended that people started collecting and keeping books and comics and magazines. As George Carlin observed, we then had to build bigger and bigger homes to put all our accumulating stuff into.

Opportunities for enhanced recycling remain great even in the case of paper and aluminum cans, the two materials whose recycling rates are the highest in all affluent countries (Japan's paper recycling may be the exception as it is already about as complete as is practical). Perhaps most notably, until 2008 paper was still the largest discarded material going into US landfills (almost 21% of the total mass, compared to nearly 17% for plastics), and although by 2010 it had fallen to just below plastic's share (16.2 vs 17.3%) the total mass of buried paper was still nearly 27 Mt/year (USEPA, 2011a): that is more than the annual production of all paper and paperboard in the same year in Germany (FAO, 2013). And while the mass of paper landfilled in the USA in 2010 was half of the total in 1990 (26.7 vs 52.5 Mt), during the same two decades the mass of discarded plastics rose by 70% and the total of buried polymers, 28.5 Mt, was greater than the combined annual production in Germany and France (Plastics Europe, 2012). Or another comparison: a destitute waste collector may spend a day collecting a mass of 1 kg of plastic shopping bags when rummaging the open garbage tips of Asia's megacities, while the USA buries nearly 80 000 t of plastic in its landfills every day. While in the USA only about 8% of discarded plastics were recovered in 2010 (with the rate ranging from 23% for PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles to less than1% for PP (polypropylene) waste), the EU's goal for 2020 is full diversion of plastic waste from landfills (EPRO, 2011). This would require a 50% increase of the 2010 recovery rate of 66%, roughly split between recycling and incineration for energy recovery. And, of course, waste recovery is not synonymous with recycling as significant shares of collected materials are not reused but landfilled (after volume reduction by shredding or compression).

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 97 percent of postconsumer textile waste is recyclable. Yet only 20 percent gets recycled because the consumer simply does not know it can be. When I was a child, I remember watching a wooden mill turn old bed linens into beautiful paper sheets at the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, but I had forgotten about the class field trip until today. Throughout the world, a small portion of worn-out textiles is currently being converted into rags for the construction, painting, and automobile industries; another percentage is shredded into flocking fibers for insulating, padding, upholstering, or soundproofing purposes. But the recyclers wish they could put their hands on all textile discards, including the extras that we simply throw away or hoard for the what-if. Resale giant Goodwill, along with mobile recycling bins, accept both natural and man-made fibers of any brand for recycling. Those items that have holes, rips, and stains beyond repair can be boxed, labeled “rags,” and donated to participating locations, where they are then dispatched to textile recyclers.

request recyclable material from your shippers. Reject bubble wrapping, Styrofoam, and plastic bags, and propose alternatives such as paper or cloth.

Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.