Unprinted newsprint is (or was – keep reading) widely used for industrial void fill, surface protection, and wrapping applications. You’ve probably seen it at one time or another when you moved. Moving companies use newsprint extensively, mainly in sheeted form, to protect your belongings before boxing them up.

Did you ever wonder where this newsprint comes from?

A Good Green Story …
For the most part, industrial newsprint is trim and waste generated by paper mills as they run newspaper-grade newsprint. I was in Montreal once getting a tour of an Abitibi newsprint mill, and the tour guide took us to a building that must have been 750,000 square feet. He opened an immense sliding door and we saw that the building was packed floor to ceiling with trim newsprint rolls — big, heavy rolls, 40″ – 50″ diameter, anywhere from 12″ – 84″ wide.

Newsprint mills sell this paper at scrap prices to converters that sheet it down for moving companies and other types of users. Some of the scrap newsprint is colored — pink, yellow, blue. That’s because when the paper mill switches from running, say, white pages to yellow pages for the phone book, it generates transitional material with too much color variation for printing.

Newsprint and many other industrial papers, such as bogus kraft, come to market this way. Industrial users who make use of this material for packaging contribute to sustainability by minimizing paper production waste on a high order of magnitude.

Is Coming to An End

The future of industrial newsprint is bleak, given the decline of printed telephone books and newspapers. Mills have begun repulping their scrap tonnage rather than send it into the secondary market. Fortunately, other types of recycled and recyclable papers are available to fill the void, literally and figuratively.

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Void fill can be broken down into several categories.

Loose fill materials, commonly called “packing peanuts”, are made from a variety of eco friendly and not so eco friendly materials, including polystyrene, corn starch, and paper. The weight of loose fill varies depending on the material, but generally speaking, loose fill is inexpensive per application, but messy and not very effective for cushioning.

Industrial papers include kraft paper, newsprint, and tissue paper. Most papers used for void fill have high PCW content, are fairly inexpensive per application, and are easier and cleaner to use than loose fill. Industrial papers are available in sheeted or roll form, making them easy to integrate into most packing operations. Multi-layered papers have become more popular in recent years, mainly due to shippers looking for alternatives to plastic-based packing materials. Multi-layer papers, which are typically made on-site, provide excellent cushioning, but are significantly heavier than plastic alternatives.

Flexible foams and bubble material, though much more expensive per application than other options, have outstanding cushioning and surface protection characteristics, making them a good choice when those attributes are needed. Foam and bubble are available with and without non-recycled content. Performance may be compromised with materials having a high recycled content, so it’s a good idea to carefully test before making a decision. These materials are not recommended for general purpose void fill.

Expandable foam, sometimes called foam-in-place, mix two liquid chemicals inside a polyethylene bag on site to produce a sack of foam that expands and hardens, either in a mold or around the product being packaged. Disposal and recyclability of these materials vary according to the manufacturer. Expandable foam, like flexible foam and bubble, are designed for specialized use. Expandable foams come in a variety of densities and are used when cushioning and/or blocking and bracing are imperative. They are expensive per application, and are used widely in the electronics and furniture industries, among others.

Inflatable air pillows are rolls of polyethylene bags delivered to the user on a roll, and then inflated with a simple machine, either as they are being used or in batches. Air pillows are inexpensive per application and provide much more cushioning than loose fill. Our new Globe Guard Inflatable Air Pillows are made from 100% recycled material, which we believe is unique.

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk about a little more about how to match up your specific needs with the right material.