Paper Towels

Reduce your business’s environmental footprint with our paper towel recycling service. We help businesses recycle used paper towels, transforming them into new products through a groundbreaking, specialised paper mill process that keeps them in the circular economy. Recycling paper towels helps your business reduce waste and reinforces your commitment to sustainable practices.

What Can Go in Your Paper Towel Recycling?

Yes Please

Paper towels
Blue roll (hand drying only)

No Thanks

Kitchen roll
Food
Cardboard

How are Paper Towels Collected?

1100l Wheeled Bin

Capacity: 1100L (Holds 12-15 of Recorra’s 6kg sacks)

Size: 1.35m (H), 1.37m (W), 1.08m (D)

Best for: store rooms with limited space, multi-tenanted buildings or offices, hospitals, hotels, retailers, restaurants

How Does Collection Work?

Place an order for a bin based on your business’s needs, i.e., a Recycling Hub or wheeled bin, and rolls of Recorra’s colour-coded sacks by contacting our Helpdesk. You’ll use the sacks to collect paper towels, and the bins to store the full sacks.

Work with our Helpdesk to set up a collection schedule that suits your needs.

Once the bin is delivered, set it up in your store room or loading bay.

Inform your staff of the location and proper use of your new bins and sacks. You can download and print signage from the ‘Resources’ section of the MyRecorra portal to help your staff sort paper towel recycling properly.

Ensure your paper towels are used for hand drying only and are collected separately from all other waste. If bins are too small for Recorra’s colour-coded sacks, ask staff to use clear bin liners and put them inside Recorra’s colour-coded sacks when full. When Recorra’s colour-coded sacks are full, ensure they are stored in your wheeled bin or Recycling Hub.

Recorra’s Operatives will arrive and collect your recycling as agreed.

You can buy back your recycled paper towels as new paper supplies through our Workplace Supplies arm.

What Collection Type Is Right for You?

This drop-front wheeled bin allows you to store several recycling streams in one container, eliminating the need for multiple bins in your storage room or loading bay. Simply use Recorra’s colour-coded sacks to collect each type of recycling and store them in the Recycling Hub. Our team will identify the waste type by the sack’s colour, so you don’t need separate bins or extra sorting.

Our Helpdesk will help you select a collection schedule that suits your needs, and our operatives will arrive as agreed to collect your paper towels. We use box trucks for collection and handball sacks from the bin.

What Happens After Paper Towels are Collected?

Disposal location: Essity UK Ltd Stubbins Mill Stubbins St, Ramsbottom, Bury BL0 0NH

Once paper towels are collected, they are transported to a specialised mill where they’re pulped and recycled into new paper products. This innovative process breaks down and cleans the fibres to recover high-quality material.

Paper towels are made from short plant fibres, such as cellulose from wood pulp. These fibres are considered too short to be useful in creating new products. Longer fibres are more desirable because they provide strength, making them easier to reprocess into new paper products.

Paper towels also contain wet-strength agents. These are chemicals that prevent them from falling apart when wet. Water is a key part of the paper recycling process, so these agents make recycling difficult. As a result, most paper towels end up in general waste, contributing to higher disposal costs for businesses and negative environmental impact.

Our specialist paper towel recycling partner removes the wet-strength agents present in the paper towels you provide. Then, the paper towels are broken down and the fibres are recovered and transformed into all-new paper products. This is made possible because your collections are clean, i.e., they only contain paper towels used for hand drying.

How Does This Support Sustainability Goals?

When paper towels are discarded in general waste, businesses miss the opportunity to recover valuable resources. Recycling them helps reduce carbon emissions, conserve raw materials, and lower waste disposal costs. Paper towels can be recycled up to nine times.

The environmental benefits of paper recycling include:

Water saved: Recycling one tonne of paper can conserve approximately 26,000 litres of water
Energy saved: Recycling paper uses about 70% less energy
Trees preserved: Recycling one tonne of paper can save 17 trees
General waste reduction: A study by Tork found that recycling paper towels could reduce general waste by up to 20%

Each sack of recycled paper towels avoids wasted resources and supports the circular economy: a system that never allows materials to become waste. Once the recycling process is complete, you can buy back your recycling as new paper products like hand towels through our Workplace Supplies website, helping to create a closed-loop process for this frequently used item. In contrast to a ‘take-make-dispose’ process, this ensures the valueable resources in your paper towels are used again and again.

FAQs

Yes, blue roll can be included as long as it has only been used for hand drying.
No, kitchen towels belong in general waste due to food waste contamination.
Most paper towels are recyclable through specialised industrial processes, like Recorra’s Paper Towel Recycling, which pulps and recycles used towels into new products. Standard household recycling or composting is usually not suitable for paper towels.
Yes, Recorra can accept wet paper towels. Our specialised paper towel recycling process can handle damp towels, turning them into new products. Heavily contaminated towels with chemicals, food waste, or hazardous substances should be left out of your recycling to ensure effective fibre recovery.
Yes, Recorra accepts all brands of paper towel. The only requirement is that they are used solely for hand drying. This helps us maintain a clean and consistent waste stream, making it easier to process materials responsibly. Whether you use a premium brand or a more economic option, all paper towels are accepted through our paper towel recycling service.
Let your cleaning team know you are segregating paper towels as a dedicated recycling stream. They’ll need to line your washroom bins with our branded sacks and, when full, place them in your drop-front bin for collection. If bins are too small for Recorra’s sacks, they’ll need to use smaller, clear sacks to line your bins and put these sacks inside of Recorra’s colour-coded sacks when full. Work with them to ensure the paper towel sacks remain free from contamination for high-quality recycling.
Yes, paper towels can be recycled, but standard paper mills can’t process them due to the ‘wet strength’ chemical that prevents the fibres from falling apart when they come into contact with water. Recorra collects used paper towels from businesses and sends them to specialised paper mills, where they remove the ‘wet strength’ additive to process them into new paper products.

Start Recycling Your Paper Towels

Want to recycle paper towels the right way? Get in touch with our team for a quick quote and bespoke service plan that fits your business needs.

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