Waste paper collection companies collect and receive a wide range of paper types. Some will be need to be sorted, often by hand, both to allow for the removal of unwanted items and to sort the paper into grades ready for reuse.

Some types of waste, excess printed copies and damaged unprinted reels of paper, waste from conversion processes, for example, will not need to be sorted and will bypass this stage.

Bales of sorted waste materials are mixed with water and mechanically pulped in preparation for the subsequent processes.

Improved pulping and reprocessing technology means that many materials that could not be recycled – perfect bound books or laminated covers – can now be recycled; although increased energy will be required and large amounts of such items are undesirable.

Dispersal: for a small number of special-effect, papers the ink in the recycled paper remains.

De-inking: through a flotation process, air and soaps are injected to form a foam. Water repellent ink particles attach to the bubbles in the foam, rise to the surface and are removed.

Residue from the de-inking process, usually around 10% of the original paper volume, is used for a variety of purposes: e.g. building materials.

'Screening (with progressively smaller screens) is used to remove unwanted items from the waste paper:

Coarse screening to remove larger items such as staples, paper clips, plastics, un-separated fibres and large pieces of adhesives.

Cleaning and screening, using centrifugal technology, to remove heavy contaminants too small for fine screening and not affected by flotation, such as grit

A rarely mentioned stage of the recycling process: fibres are disentangled to ensure good subsequent bonding.

Refining improves the strength of the new paper, allowing increased papermaking productivity and increased use of recycled fibres.

The most common method of rebleaching recycled fibre is using hydrogen peroxide. The bleaching process may, for the whiter recycled papers, involve two stages.

The image below shows virgin fibre pulp at different stages of the pulping and bleaching process. Recycled fibre, being already bleached, enters the process roughly the same colour as the bleached pulp.

Papers are made to specific, and very precise, ‘recipes’, according to their end use.
All papers are made from more than just cellulose fibres: a coated, virgin fibre paper maybe as low as 52% paper (cellulose fibres).

Paper also contain:
Fillers: mineral additions to the wood fibres.
Optical Brightening Agents: to improve a material’s whiteness.

Coating on coated papers:
such as china clay and calcium carbonate, create a smooth surface. May also contain dispersants, to ensure even distribution of coating, and lubricants to enhance specific properties, such as folding qualities.
Coating also contains pigment and binder:
Pigments: Determine whiteness and smoothness
Binders: Ensure the coating adheres to the base paper