Large trucks roll into the yard of Chattanooga Recycled Fiber each day to dump loads of paper waste collected from companies and community recycling centers throughout Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia.

Chattanooga Recycled Fiber is a division of Rock-Tenn Company, based in Norcross, Georgia. Rock-Tenn was established in 1936 and is a leading manufacturer of packaging and merchandising products, as well as cardboard displays and recycled paperboard. Rock-Tenn operates paper manufacturing facilities throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Chile.

What is so unusual about Rock-Tenn’s manufacturing process? Its mills run 100 percent recycled material, not pulp. "Manufacturing from recycled material is economically more feasible versus pulp," says John Gorman, general manager at Chattanooga Recycled Fiber. "Our mills are not capable of running pulp—they only run recycled material."

Rock-Tenn has 13 recycled fiber collection and processing plants, like Chattanooga Recycled Fiber, throughout the United States, including six plants in the Southeast.

"Historically, it’s been Rock-Tenn’s strategic plan to use 100% recycled fiber in its manufacturing plants," says Gretchen Vaught, manager of corporate communications for Rock-Tenn Company. "Rock-Tenn believes in the recycling division and maintaining current operations of that division."

Chattanooga Recycled Fiber operates by collecting paper material from area businesses and industries, and it collects a small portion from community recycling centers as well. "We process 90 percent industrial waste and 10 percent residential," Gorman says. "Industrial is where recycling is strongest, and that’s where it needs to be."

Gorman says that representatives from Chattanooga Recycled Fiber will go to a company and tell them which waste materials that are currently being thrown out can actually be saved for recycling. Then, Chattanooga Recycled Fiber will send out a truck to collect the materials for free. "We started our own trucking of waste because it required too much attention to leave it to a third party," Gorman says. "We decided to take care of it ourselves."

Mathematically speaking, businesses and industries like Coca-Cola or Olan Mills do produce much more recyclable waste than do the average community recycling centers. But Chattanooga Recycled Fiber is still committed to collecting from counties and local municipalities. "It’s a win/win," Gorman says. "We get more paper, but we also help them keep their centers open."

Once the paper materials have been collected and dropped off at one of the recycled fiber plants, such as Chattanooga Recycled Fiber, the paper is then sorted according to its composition, such as gray, soft newsprint or white, firm card stock.

"There are different variables in recycling," Gorman says. "It’s kind of like a milkshake—you put chocolate in, but then if you put something else in it, it’s no longer only a chocolate milkshake. Mixing together different grades of recycled material contaminates the product."

So, because of the risks of contaminating recycled material, Chattanooga Recycled Fiber carefully sorts the paper materials it collects before they are processed and baled. Chattanooga Recycled Fiber also cooperates with the Chattanooga-based Orange Grove Center which runs a recyclable sorting program, Gorman says.

Once the paper materials have been sorted, the different grades of paper are sent through a giant shredding machine called a Hogger that can grind 20 tons of material in one hour. The fiber is then compacted into bales that can weigh as much as one ton each, Gorman says.

Chattanooga Recycled Fiber ships the bales of fiber off to Rock-Tenn’s paper manufacturing plants, such as the Chattanooga Rock-Tenn mill, based near the Tennessee River on Manufacturer’s Road. Rock-Tenn also sells some of its recycled fiber bales to other paper manufacturing companies such as Kimberly-Clark, Fort Howard and Fort James. The recycled fiber is then used to create recycled paper products.

Rock-Tenn produces at least half of the cardboard displays that line the aisles of grocery and discount stores, advertising various food, health and home products, such as Oil of Olay and Crest, Gorman says. Rock-Tenn is also a leading manufacturer of recycled paperboard, which is used for book covers, laminated boards, and the backs of ready-to-assemble, pressed-board furniture. Other products Rock-Tenn produces include golf ball boxes and slipcases for VHS cassette tapes.

As a manufacturer that uses recycling as a key component of its production process, Rock-Tenn is saving a lot—not only financially, but also in terms of its use of environmental resources. "Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees, 6,953 gallons of water, and 4,077 kilowatt hours of energy," according to an Environmental Protection Agency document entitled "Resource Conservation Challenge: Making the Connection with Solid Waste Facts and Figures."

Nationwide, Rock-Tenn collects and processes roughly 48,000 tons of recycled material each year, Gorman says. Using the EPA statistic that one ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees would mean that Rock-Tenn saves approximately 816,000 trees per year by using recycled fiber in place of pulp.

As a leading manufacturer of recycled paper products, Rock-Tenn sets an example for other corporations in answering the government’s call for everyone, including industries and small businesses, to participate in recycling and using recycled products. While recycling has become more of a trend in the residential sector during the past 10 or 15 years, Rock-Tenn has been actively involved in recycling paper products to feed its paper mills for almost 70 years now. "Recycling is not a trend for us," Gorman says, "it’s our way of business."