The use of recovered paper as a raw material for paper production is by far the most economical and ecological strategy for the disposal of waste paper. However, paper production from recovered paper furnish generates a great amount of residues, and the higher the demand requirements for the end product, the higher the amount of rejected material. The reason for this is that the selectivity of the deinking process is limited; therefore, some valuable components are also lost in reject streams. The rejection of usable components affects the economics of recycled paper production. As the cost of waste disposal continues to increase, this issue is becoming more and more severe. This paper summarizes the current state of the resource efficiency in recycled pulp production and provides information on the volumes of rejected streams and the usable material within them. Various means to use these reject streams are also discussed, including the main findings of a recent thesis by the main author. This review summarizes current internal and external use of reject streams generated in the deinking operations.
Integrating digitization technologies into resource efficiency driven industrial learning environments