Verification of Post Consumer Recycled Content in Folding Boxboard Supply Chains
Verifying post-consumer recycled claims in folding boxboard requires cross-referencing FSC/PEFC credit accounts with deinking yield losses and MOSH/MOAH markers.
Deinking Yield Loss
Fiber Shrinkage
Percentage measurements of material discarded during the removal of ink and contaminants from recovered paper define the efficiency of a recycling circuit. Higher deinking yield loss indicates that a large volume of usable fiber or filler is being removed along with the unwanted particles. This metric directly impacts the economic viability of a secondary fiber mill.
It accounts for both organic and inorganic solids found in the waste stream.
Processing Efficiency
Mechanical screening and flotation cells represent the primary points where mass is removed from the process. While the goal of deinking yield loss is to isolate ink and other plastic fragments, some small wood fibers inevitably attach to air bubbles and exit via the reject pipe. Modern systems attempt to recover these fibers through multiple cleaning stages.
The amount of sludge produced serves as a physical record of the total mass lost.
Material Composition
Ash content in the incoming raw material heavily influences the total volume of rejected matter. Magazines and coated papers contribute more to deinking yield loss than newspapers because of their high mineral filler loading. When the filler washes away, it leaves behind a lower mass of finished pulp compared to the weight of the input bales.
Recovered fibers from office waste tend to have different loss profiles than those from brown corrugated containers. Effective chemical management keeps the loss of long fibers to a minimum even when the quality of the input material fluctuates.