My apologies for not posting this yesterday. After all the running around and such I had to do yesterday I was just too tired and I didn’t want to write about my experience when I was partially “out of it”.
Yesterday, April 14, 2010, I was very fortunate to have an eye-opening behind the scenes tour of the Marcal paper factory in Northern New Jersey. It was a lovely day outside as well.
I was very surprised when I arrived at the factory. I would have thought it would have been much bigger and more “industrial” looking. Instead I was greeted by a quaint old brick building. Honestly I prefer the look of this factory compared to those monsterous eye sores like some factories are.
Once inside I was greeted by several employees of Marcal who were incredibly nice and very welcoming. I also had the opportunity to meet several bloggers I have only hear of (and some I even read their blogs). The first two people I met were Carol from The Adventures of a NY City Mama and Jen from The Next Kid Thing.
Soon all the other bloggers showed up and we were ready to start our tour. We were given “fashionable” goggles to wear to protect our eyes and ear plugs to use in the super noisy parts of the factory. We also had to remove all of our jewelry, includind wedding rings, for safety reasons.
I was very impressed with the factory it’s self. It’s actually two different buildings. The factory was built back in 1950 and retained it’s original charm.
Our first stop on the tour was where they store the paper that is used to make Marcal Small Step products. ALL of their paper products are made from 100% recycled papers. That means that the Marcal toilet paper, paper towels, napkins and tissue originally started out as newspapers, student homework, bills, bank statements, wrapping paper and other paper products.
Notice the tall, cylinder shaped things to the right of the following image? These are “parent” rolls that were created to make the paper products with that some how got water damage so they are going to be recycled again and make back into another “parent” roll. Marcal does not waste paper. Even paper that has already been recycled can get recycled again and again into new products. I even noticed “ends” to paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls being recycled again. Marcal does not waste any paper.
Check out some of the ladies next to the huge piles of paper.
Here is some recycled paper that is made into a huge bale on the back of a truck. Did you know that paper is a commodity? I never knew that. That means that it’s in high demand just like petroleum, copper and even milk. I just assumed paper was junk. I never knew that there was a market in buying and selling what I saw as just “garbage”.
Our next stop on the tour was where they made the paper pulp. Recycled paper is fed into these two enormous vats. There the paper is mixed with water and soap and heated to about 110 degrees. It turns into this mushy gray “paper soup”. It gets churned inside the vats and reminded me of soft serve ice cream, except I certainly wouldn’t want to eat it!
I didn’t know that inks are lead based and because of that the ink particles sink to the bottom along with staples, plastic and other non-paper fiber products. The paper pulp is skimmed off the top leaving the non-paper materials left at the bottom to be properly disposed of.
Marcal does not add chlorine bleach, fragrance or dyes to their products. Their product are hypoallergenic too.
After the pulp is removed from the vats it gets sprayed through a series of screens which eventually turns it into enormous sheets of paper. As the pulp is process it loses it’s gray color and turns into a nice white color as a result.
These are “parent” rolls which is the end result of the screen process. Each parent roll is used to make the various paper products that Marcal produces. These particular ones are marked for recycling again. Apparently they had some kind of water damage to them. Since Marcal doesn’t waste paper they are just going to repeat the process to create new parent rolls.
Check out this huge roll. It looks like a giant roll of toilet paper. I’m not sure how wide these are but they are about 5 feet tall in height, if not more. Each roll contains enough paper for a single person for an entire year including toilet paper, paper towels, napkins and tissues. WOW! We sure use A LOT of paper products.
Inside the factory was pretty neat. There was stuff going on all over, even above our heads! Check out the paper towel rolls that were whizzing over head.
Look at these huge cardboard rolls.
If you have used Marcal Small Steps products before you might have noticed the pretty designs on them. This is the press machine that embeds the designs into the paper products.
Check out this tower of paper rolls. This almost went right up to the ceiling.
Here is the toilet paper that just got chopped by these scary looking blades. I think these blades would put Ginsu knives to shame. Ha Ha.
If you look closely you’ll see one of the round blades that was chopping the toilet paper rolls into their appropriate sizes.
Of course the toilet paper needs to be wrapped individually for sale. Here is the wrapper machine (for lack of a better description).
Marcal produces A LOT of toilet paper. Check out all the toilet paper rolls that were racing past us on it’s way to getting packaged up.
Every where you looked you would see stacks and stacks of Marcal products.
Here is Lindsay, the Marcal Brand Ambassador and one of our fabulous tour guides, showing off the finished product.
And here is a Marcal employee who was more then happy to pose for a picture. Too bad it came out fuzzy.
The tour was really interesting. I will NEVER look at toilet paper, paper towels, tissue paper and napkins the same way again. The next time I use a Marcal Small Steps product I’m going to look at it and think to myself that this was once a newspaper, junk mail or some students classwork assignment.
After our tour Marcal treated us to a delicious lunch of these incredibly tasty panini style sandwiches, salad and the biggest pile of cookies I have ever seen! I was a good girl and didn’t over indulge (keeping Nutrisystem in my mind the whole time). Although I probably could have. The sandwiches were so good!
While we had our lunch we talked some more about Marcal, it’s history, the importance of being “green” and how we can help saves trees. Sadly I think way too many people take for granted the trees we have on our planet. Trees are EXTREMELY vital to the human race, as well as all other living creatures on our precious planet. The more trees that are destroyed the more irreversible damage we are doing to our planet.
Did you know that 98% of all paper products come from cutting down trees and only 2% of paper products are made from recycled paper? That made me sick to hear that. WOW! 98% of paper products are a result of killing a tree? That’s not good. That is really a wake up call. Marcal Small Steps is one of only a handful of companies that use recycled paper products in order to produce new products AND SAVE TREES at the same time.
If a family of four could switch to recycled paper products they could save two trees per year, or about 17 trees in 10 years. I know you are thinking that two trees doesn’t sound like much, but look at it this way. There are 10 units in my condo building. If we all switched to 100% recycled paper products for 1 year we’d save about 20 trees. There are 40 building in our complex. If everyone did that we could save 80 trees per year. There are two condo developments next to where I live. If those two joined in the effort we could save 240 trees in ONE YEAR!
Two trees might not sound like much but if you sit there and do the math and think about your friends, family, neighbors, employer and other companies switching to 100% paper products those two trees really add up – and quickly!
If everyone in the United States would switch to 100% recycled paper products for just one year we could save 123,522,000 trees! That is enough trees to fill an area the size of 23 Manhattans! WOW!!!
The average person uses 50 pounds of paper products per year. That means for my family of four we use 200 pounds of paper products per year. Wow. That really gets you thinking.
I am VERY impressed by Marcal. They have been making recycled paper products for 50 years, decades before other companies even gave it a thought to make recycled products. Not only that Marcal clearly cares a lot about the welfare of our planet and is committed to spreading the word about the importance of recycling and using recycled products.
Marcal Small Steps products are also very affordable, unlike other products made from recycled materials which are actually more expensive then the non-recycled products.
Marcal Small Steps will be launching a brand new web site in about a week. Their new site will feature a lot of great information about recycling, taking care of our environment, educational materials that will be free to download (great for class rooms and home schoolers too!) and much more. Their web site is www.MarcalSmallSteps.com.
I have an amazing experience. Not only did I meet lovely bloggers like Jenn from In Jennie’s Kitchen, Nicole from Mom Trends, Kimberly from Mom in the City and Nikki from Euphoria Luv, to name a few (sorry for not mentioning everyone – it’s not intentional ♥), but it really opened my eyes to the importance of recycling and using products that are made from recycled materials.
Thank you Marcal and to the other lovely bloggers who shared the say with me for a most wonderful afternoon! ♥
To learn more about Marcal Small Steps visit http://www.marcalsmallsteps.com/. You can also follow them on Twitter at @MarcalSmallStep and on Facebook (CLICK HERE). There you can see more photos from our tour yesterday. See if you can find me. LOL! I tried to cover up those pesky gray hairs and had a wee bit of a color “issue” and my hair turned out Ronald McDonald red. Thankfully it’s only temporary and should wash out in a week or two.
If you are doing any Earth Day events you should download the FREE “Marcal-endar” from their Facebook page. It has lots of valuable information on it.
*I received free car service to/from the event as well as a goodie bag of products. There was no other compensation. The opinions expressed are my own. Related Posts:
