By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Columnist

Earth Day and its emphasis on recycling is upon us tomorrow, and unless you're reading this on the Web, chances are you're holding and surrounded by a readily recyclable material — paper.

The wood-products firm Georgia Pacific (www.gp.com) says every person in America uses 749 pounds of paper every year, and that recycling is increasing, now amounting to 47 million tons a year.

That means close to half the paper used in this country is recycled — about 323 pounds per person.

The American Forest and Paper Association (www.afandpa.org) says that more than one-third of the raw material going into paper mills is recycled product. The association says newspapers have the highest rate of recovery of any paper product, 78.4 percent nationally. Corrugated cardboard comes next.

More than one-third of recycled newspaper is turned back into newsprint. The rest becomes recycled paperboard, writing paper, tissue and other products. Some newsprint is converted into entirely different products, such as roofing tiles.

The environmental publication The Green Guide (thegreenguide.com) says in its March-April newsletter that recycling rates are still not nearly high enough. To reduce the amount of forest that's harvested for paper, The Green Guide and other recycling advocates make the point that for the consumer, putting material in the recycling bin is only half the job. The other half is to buy recycled material.

If you're out buying paper, there are several terms of which to be aware.

Post-consumer waste recycled paper (sometimes labeled PCW) is made of paper that was used by consumers and then recycled into new paper. If it says 50 percent PCW, then half of the raw material for the paper came from the recycling bin.

If the paper says recycled, it may simply be made up of scraps from within the paper-making process, but not from consumer recycling efforts. Environmental groups are lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to require labels to list the percentage of actual post-consumer waste in paper.

Virgin paper is made directly from plant material, not recycled paper.

You can find out more about which paper is recycled at the ForestEthics Web site (www.forestethics.org).

ForestEthics makes the argument that despite advances in paper recycling, there's still a ways to go. It says that 90 percent of the highest quality paper — printing and writing paper — still comes directly from trees.

ForestEthics says recycling saves more than its share of trees. While a ton of recycled paper can be converted into almost a ton of new paper, it takes 2 to 3.5 tons of trees to make a ton of paper.

Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i bureau chief and its science and environment writer. Contact him at (808) 245-3074 or jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.