Gumming up the works

摘要

Stickles is the name given to contamination of recyclable paper from certain types of adhesives, such as computer labels, return address labels, removable ads on the fronts of newspapers and telephone books, pasted-in items in magazines and similar uses. The problems that stickles cause for recovered paper processors have been known for a long time. In 1975, for example, the Solid Waste Council of the Paper Industry (Washington) published the report Paper Recycling, The Impact of Contaminants 1973-1985, which identified pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) as one of the major and troublesome contaminants for paper recycling, with their use likely to rapidly increase. A 1996 estimate indicated that stickies were costing the paper recycling industry $700 million a year.