Blog 8: Paper!!

My, my, my, how the time has flown ... this is my LAST blog post (No, the screen isn't blurry, those are just your tears. I get it, and I'm passing you an imaginary tissue now. There, there, you'll be ok🫶)

Last week, we had our final technical visit to one of the coolest places ever - a paper recycling mill (Papiro Sarda)! Can I just say: I LOVE PAPER. The plant was so very cool and it was amazing to see how a massive pile of trash (McDonalds and Burger King packaging, beer boxes, etc.) can be turned into neat orderly stacks of paper to live its next life.

The paper mill pays for recycled paper (massive mound above) which is separated into corrugated cardboard and general mixed paper packaging. This is then fed into the pulper, which slushes the paper with water and pumps it into an 8mm hole (to filter out things like staples, etc.). The pulp is then sent to a cyclone separator, which uses centrifugal force to filter out materials like metals from the pulp. The remaining pulp is pumped through a 1.5mm hole to the next stage.

 

Once the fibers have been separated, cleaned, and refined, they are placed in a web on a thin plastic screen. This high-moisture-content web is then pressed to increase its density, then dried in ovens to remove the remaining moisture. 

 

High moisture paper mixture (left) and pressing (right)

Drying Ovens

  

The dried paper is then rolled up and transported!

In addition to massive rolls of paper, the plant produces some other packaging products (paper bags, lined paper, etc.). We all got to take some bags for the road:)

Because no week here would be complete without multiple beach visits, we spent the rest of the day at the beach at Nora! We played some jackpot, snorkeled (lots of cool fish to see who kept nibbling on us), and had a lovely time!

Ciao,

Annie