Recycled pulp from used paper carton in Japan

Recycled pulp in Japan is like an alternative material for the paper mills during the virgin pulp price situation is quite crazy in recent. Let me show you the recycled pulp in Japan, what is it made? what is the specification? and so on.

Paper carton is referred to milk, juice, lactic beverage container and so on that does not have any aluminum laminated to the inside surface. After that the used carton should be washed, cut and dried. In Japan, the collection methods include store collection at supermarkets and other similar stores, municipality collection, post office, group collection by citizen’s groups, and collection at schools as illustrate in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Collection places and containers of paper cartons in Japan

Paper recyclers and wholesalers of used (consumed) paper sort paper cartons and transport them to paper recycled manufacturers. Laminated portions are removed and the base paper (raw paper) portion is dissolved. At this point, foreign substances such as residual ink are extracted in order to produce clean pulp that is suitable for manufacturing recycled products such as toilet rolls or tissue.

The journey of the recycled paper carton is shown in the Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 The journey of recycled paper carton to the end product

When we look at the composition and shape of paper carton, we can see 3 main components; polyethylene, ink and base paper. Moreover, there are two types of the shape of the paper carton; gable top and brick pack as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 The composition of the paper carton and its shape type

Daiwa Shiryo Japan have the partner company, Nissey Sangyo, who produces the recycled pulp using paper carton in Japan. The paper carton is coated with “polyethylene film”. General used paper is printed directly on paper (pulp). However, since the paper pack is printed on the film, the printing ink remains attached to the film and the pulp and ink can be easily separated, so no deinking equipment is required and high-quality recycled pulp is obtained.

In addition, the pulp used in paper cartons contains a large amount of N-material pulp made from softwood, providing high reliability in terms of strength. The specification of this recycled pulp is shown Table 1;

Table 1 Recycled pulp specification using paper carton