ABSTRACT
Nowadays, when humanity is facing a global ecological crisis, the concept of sustainable development is the only way to decrease the negative impacts on the environment. Future sustainability depends on people. This statement is the leitmotif of the overview presented in this chapter. The main issues addressed here concern both industrial and laboratory-scale recycling of waste paper. While world production of paper, which is a significant sector in the total world industry, and the consumption of paper and board are drastically rising, the total amount of waste paper is also growing up dramatically. So the problems associated with the recycling of the waste paper come in the forefront. This chapter gives an overview on objective definitions of the waste paper, as in environmental and scientific aspects, describes the main stages of the waste paper recycling on industrial scale and recent novel pathways in recycling. Special attention is paid to the conversion of waste paper into cellulose, cellulose derivatives, cellulose composites, nanocellulose, nanofibrillated cellulose, and aerogels. Thus, this chapter highlights the main problems associated with waste paper recycling and shows the promising potential for trash conversion to valuable cellulose products.
