The diagram illustrates how recycled paper is produced. Overall, before turning into recycled paper, used paper must go through four steps, in which chemical and physical processes are applied.
The first step consists of turning the used paper into a pulp. It starts with the used paper being carried by a conveyor belt into a tank filled with water and chemicals. Once this process is concluded, the unfiltered pulp is moved through a pipe into a new tank, when the filtering step starts. The pulp is filtered and falls into a tank filled with water and soap.
Subsequently, the third step, cleaning, takes place. In this phase, the ink in the pulp is removed as an air pump pushes the inked water out of the tank. The clean pulps, then, are moved through a new pipe into the last phase, in which the recycled paper is created. For that to happen, the clean pulp needs to be heated in rollers while the remaining water is drained.