November 1, 2006

1 min read

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Gunk-Free Fiber

By Mark Fischetti

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Thanks to citizens everywhere, the world now recycles just over 50 percent of the paper it uses, according to various estimates. Reprocessing plants are sprouting widely. But trees will never be fully spared because of a quirk of wood fibers themselves.

Virgin pulp is rich in water, which provides for ample hydrogen bonding that holds fibers together when made into paper. But each time a fiber is cleaned, de-inked and dried in a reprocessing plant, "only 80 percent of the bonds recover," explains Yulin Deng, associate -professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After four or five recyclings, he says, "a fiber can no longer make strong enough bonds" and becomes waste.

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Mark Fischetti was a senior editor at Scientific American for nearly 20 years and covered sustainability issues, including climate, environment, energy, and more. He assigned and edited feature articles and news by journalists and scientists and also wrote in those formats. He was founding managing editor of two spin-off magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 article “Drowning New Orleans” predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. Fischetti has written as a freelancer for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and many other outlets. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti has a physics degree and has twice served as Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union’s Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism. He has appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many radio stations.

More by Mark Fischetti
Scientific American Magazine Vol 295 Issue 5This article was published with the title “Gunk-Free Fiber” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 295 No. 5 ()
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican112006-5iGtXcyFZSOHfv0kjFzgWM
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