THE BLEACHING STANDARDS ON TOILET PAPER
Dec 9th, 2020
As you can see, people usually choose traditional white toilet paper. But the pulp is originally brown, and manufacturers usually use chemical bleaching to achieve whiteness. Among them, chlorine bleaching, as a relatively backward elemental chlorine bleaching technology, has low cost and high efficiency, so it is favored by many papermaking enterprises. However, when bleaching with chlorine, chlorine reacts with chemical pollutants to produce a large number of toxic chlorinated organic compounds (AOX). When the pulp is bleached with chlorine, dioxins are bound to be formed, which will cause water pollution. To overcome the problem the paper industry invested heavily in alternative methods of bleaching.
There are common bleaching ratings and standards written on toilet papers, most of which are not clear to consumers. Below are some of the standards as recognized by the American Forest and Paper Association (AFPA).
♦ Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF):
Using CLO2 instead of chlorine bleaching will greatly reduce the content of chlorinated organic compounds in bleaching wastewater, which is commonly known as elemental chlorine-free bleaching technology. However, a small amount of elemental chlorine is produced during CLO2 bleaching. So this is not absolutely chlorine-free bleaching. Toilet papers with the ECF standard don’t make use of the chlorine element itself for bleaching. They make use of chlorine derivatives such as chlorine dioxide for bleaching the pulp. ECF still produces dioxins and organochlorine compounds.
♦Totally Chlorine Free (TCF):
This standard means that chlorine isn’t used in any way to bleach the product. TCFis to bleach with oxidizing chemicals such as H2O2, ozone and peracetic acid without any chlorine-containing bleaching agents. One of the measures of the toxic effect bleaching has on effluent is the AOX level. This is expressed as kg per tonne of pulp produced, with the lower the figure the better. ECF bleaching will have an AOX level no higher than 0.5kg/tonne and TCF will have a zero AOX level.
In recent years, there are many debates about ECF and TCF, mainly focusing on which method is best for the environment.
Environmental groups prefer TCF, to think it can eliminate dioxins and so on more thoroughly. At the same time, it is more conducive to the closed cycle of the bleaching workshop or factory in the future.
There have been a large number of studies on the comparison of ECF and TCF bleaching wastewater, and the general conclusion is that TCF has obvious environmental benefits. Although of more importance is how well the effluent has been treated and this is one of the factors to assess when looking at the performance of suppliers. Assuming that the wastewater of the paper mill is treated properly, the pollution situation will not be much different.
Newland Bamboo is a bamboo toilet paper supplier with your own brand. We use ECF bleaching and H2O2 bleaching techniques. Compared to traditional bleaching methods that rely on chlorine and other harsh chemicals, Peroxide Bleaching is a more eco-friendly and sustainable approach. To learn more or start your own toilet paper brand, contact us today!