Recycled Materials

Part of Paper Making

Using post-consumer materials — rags, rope, and fabric scraps — as papermaking raw materials, and how to identify, sort, and process them.

Why This Matters

The most historically important papermaking raw materials were not grown or harvested fresh — they were collected, sorted, and recycled from worn-out textiles. For the first 500 years of European papermaking (roughly 1200 to 1700 CE), virtually all paper was made from linen and hemp rags. This was not a compromise material — it was preferred because old rags had already been partially processed by use, washing, and wear. The sizing, waxes, and other surface treatments of new cloth had been removed; the fiber bundles had been partially loosened by mechanical stress; and the cellulose was clean and accessible.

In a post-collapse community, recycled textile material offers several advantages over fresh plant fibers. It requires less cooking (the hard chemical work of breaking down plant structures has been largely done already). It uses materials that would otherwise be waste, turning worn-out clothing into permanent records. And linen and hemp rags produce among the finest paper available — stronger and longer-lasting than paper from fresh plant materials.

Establishing a community rag collection system, with sorting, storage, and processing protocols, is the foundation of a sustainable papermaking operation that does not compete with food production for agricultural land.

Understanding Why Rags Make Good Paper

A cotton or linen garment is already made of cellulose fibers — the same material as paper. The textile manufacturing process has already:

• Separated fibers from the parent plant
• Cleaned away most non-cellulose materials
• Spun fibers into yarn (which aligns them and makes bundles accessible)
• Washed and sized the cloth (which adds surface treatments that must be removed, but the underlying fiber is already clean)

Years of use and washing further break down surface coatings, loosen fiber bundles, and remove natural waxes and pectin that would otherwise require aggressive cooking to eliminate. A ten-year-old linen shirt requires one-tenth the cooking needed to process fresh flax straw.

Identifying Usable Materials

The key distinction is between plant-based fibers (usable) and protein-based or synthetic fibers (not usable for paper):

Usable: Plant-Based Fibers

• Linen (flax): Excellent. White or off-white cloth, slightly stiff when new, gets softer with age. Burns cleanly with a gray ash, smells like burning paper.
• Cotton: Excellent. Most common in clothing — soft, white or colored, fluffy fiber. Burns cleanly, ash crushes to powder.
• Hemp: Excellent. Used in rope, sacking, work clothing. Slightly coarser than linen. Creamy to tan color, strong fiber.
• Jute/burlap: Acceptable. Common in sacks and bags. Coarser fiber, produces rougher paper — good for packaging paper.
• Ramie: Excellent where available. Fine, strong fiber similar to linen.

Not Usable: Protein and Synthetic Fibers

• Wool: Burns with a sharp smell (hair burning), leaves a crushable bead. Does not produce paper fiber — will mat into a slimy mass during cooking.
• Silk: Burns like wool, luxury material unlikely to be discarded. Not useful for paper.
• Leather: Contains highly crosslinked collagen — will produce gelatin in cooking but no paper fiber.
• Synthetic fibers (polyester, nylon, acrylic): Melt when heated with a match rather than burning. Will not break down in cooking and contaminate pulp.

Identification test: Pull a few threads from any uncertain material. Hold the threads with metal tongs and touch a flame to one end. Plant fibers burn like paper — steady flame, gray ash that falls away or crumbles. Animal fibers sputter, smell of burning hair, and leave a crushable dark bead. Synthetic fibers melt to a hard, clear or colored bead.

Setting Up a Community Collection System

A well-organized rag collection system ensures a steady fiber supply and keeps sorting labor manageable:

Collection bins: Place collection bins at community textile repair stations, bathhouses, and clothing distribution points. Label clearly: “WORN CLOTH ONLY — linen, cotton, hemp.” Post an identification guide (burn test instructions, fabric examples) near each bin.

Sorting before collection: Train community members to identify unusable materials and exclude them at the point of deposit. This reduces sorting labor at the mill. A small incentive (credit toward paper allocation, for example) encourages careful sorting.

Storage containers: Store collected rags in ventilated containers — wooden boxes with gaps or baskets. Sealed containers trap moisture and encourage mold. Keep storage dry and off the ground to prevent rodent access.

Rotation: Process older rags first (first in, first out). Rags stored longer than one year in damp conditions may develop mold that weakens fiber and discolors paper. Dry storage extends viable storage time indefinitely.

Sorting and Preparing Collected Rags

Before cooking, rags must be sorted, cleaned, and cut:

Sort by Material

Separate linen from cotton from hemp, if possible. Different fibers have different optimal cooking times — mixing them means some fibers are under-cooked and others over-cooked. For small batches where separation is impractical, use the cooking time appropriate for the coarsest fiber present.

Remove Non-Fiber Components

Cut away:

• Metal buttons, clasps, hooks: Metal contaminates the pulp with rust and creates processing problems. Cut or pop off before processing. Save metal hardware — it is valuable in other contexts.
• Wooden or bone buttons: Remove for similar reasons (though wood and bone do not cause rust, they do not break down appropriately and create contaminant lumps in paper).
• Leather patches and reinforcements: Leather produces gelatin, not paper fiber.
• Seams with different thread: Many garments use thread of a different material than the fabric body. Pull out visibly different thread where practical.

Cut into Small Pieces

Cut cleaned rags into pieces approximately 5 to 10 cm square. Smaller pieces cook and beat more evenly than large pieces. They also fit more efficiently into the cooking vessel. Use fabric scissors, a sharp knife, or a rag-cutting board (a board with a fixed blade, over which cloth is pressed to cut quickly).

One person can cut approximately 2 to 3 kg of cloth per hour. For a larger production operation, a simple rag-cutting machine (a foot-powered cutting board with a rocking blade) doubles this rate.

Washing

Wash cut rags in warm water with a small amount of ash lye or soap. Most old rags carry accumulated body oils, dirt, and food contamination. These do not need to be completely removed before cooking (the cooking process removes most contaminants), but a pre-wash reduces the contamination load on the cooking solution and produces cleaner pulp.

Wring out washed rags and allow them to drain before cooking — soaked rags dilute the cooking solution.

Processing Recycled Rags

Retting (Optional but Beneficial)

Controlled microbial degradation — retting — loosens fiber bundles and partially removes non-cellulose components without chemical treatment. The same process used for fresh plant fibers works for old rags, though the required time is shorter because the fiber is already partially processed.

Place washed, cut rags in a container with enough water to cover. Allow to stand in a warm location for 1 to 3 weeks, stirring occasionally. The water will turn cloudy and dark as microbial activity proceeds. The rags will begin to smell of fermentation. When fibers pull apart more easily than when fresh — testing by pulling a small bundle between your fingers — retting is complete.

Rinse retted rags thoroughly before cooking to remove fermentation products that can acidify the paper.

Retting is optional if you intend to cook aggressively with wood ash lye. It is most valuable when you want to minimize cooking time and chemical use.

Cooking

Rags generally require less cooking than fresh plant material. Cook in a solution of water and wood ash lye (see Soaking and Cooking) using this approximate guide:

Rag Type	Cooking Time	Lye Strength
Old, soft cotton rags	30-60 minutes	Weak (light tan)
Old linen rags	1-2 hours	Weak to medium
Hemp rope or sacking	2-4 hours	Medium
New or stiff cotton	2-3 hours	Medium
New linen or canvas	3-5 hours	Medium to strong

Check readiness by pulling a small bundle of fiber from the cook pot (with a long stick — the lye solution is caustic). The fiber should separate into individual strands with light finger pressure. If large clumps resist separation, continue cooking.

Post-Cook Rinsing

Rinse cooked rags thoroughly in fresh water. Multiple rinses are necessary — alkali residue in the paper weakens fiber and can cause yellowing over time. Rinse until water squeezed from the fiber runs clear and neutral (test with color-changing plant dye strips if available, or simply rinse five or six times and squeeze firmly between each rinse).

Rope and Cordage

Old rope — especially hemp and linen rope — is premium papermaking material. Rope fibers are already long, strong, and well-aligned from the spinning and twisting process.

Preparation: Untwist rope into individual yarns, then into individual fiber strands. This manual separation is time-consuming (one person can untwist approximately 0.5 kg per hour) but eliminates the need for particularly aggressive cooking, as the rope-making process has already done most of the fiber separation work.

Salt rope (preserved with salt), tarred rope (coated with pine tar), or oiled rope requires extended cooking in lye to remove surface treatments before the fiber can be processed.

Yield Calculations

Understanding expected yield helps plan production:

• 1 kg of dry linen rags → approximately 0.7 to 0.8 kg of dry paper fiber → approximately 70 to 100 sheets of standard writing paper
• 1 kg of dry cotton rags → approximately 0.75 kg of fiber → approximately 75 to 110 sheets
• 1 kg of hemp rope → approximately 0.65 kg of fiber → approximately 65 to 90 sheets

A community of 50 people generating worn clothing at typical rates produces approximately 20 to 30 kg of usable textile fiber per year — enough for 1,500 to 3,000 sheets. Supplementing with cultivated flax or hemp significantly increases this yield.

Recycled materials are not a compromise — they are the foundation of a productive, sustainable paper mill that serves your community’s knowledge-preservation needs for generations.