Environment - PNEB - Newspaper and Magazine Recycling

Sustainable Resources

Research & Education

Sustainable Resources

Australian newsprint making is a good example of sustainable paper production. In Australia, trees are not cut down specifically to make newspapers. In fact, newsprint is made from mostly waste paper and waste timber. The pulp for making newsprint comes from:

De-inked pulp for making newsprint

De-inked old newspapers and old magazines that have been collected for recycling (20 - 40%);
Forest thinnings - which are branches and small trees removed from plantations to make room for the growth of timber used in housing and construction;
The residue when mature plantations are harvested for timber for housing and construction, and
Saw mill offcuts - which are the leftover branches, bark and pieces of wood from making sawn timber.

The pine plantations involved are sustainably managed and regrown especially for the manufacture of sawn timber and paper products.

Newsprint reels It takes 2.5 tonnes of radiata pine materials to make one tonne of newsprint.

Because the material is a by-product of timber production, it makes no sense to say that a certain number of trees are used to produce a tonne of newsprint.

No old growth eucalypt has been used in Australian newsprint manufacture since 1990.

More Sustainable Resource information on next page.