First of all, we make our paper from cotton. We don't cut down trees, and the cotton for our paper doesn't come directly from the field either. We use the small scraps left over from the manufacture of cotton garments, such as jeans and t-shirts. These recovered scraps, or rags, as we call them, would otherwise be sent to landfills. We also use something called linters, the tiny fibers adhering to the cotton seed, which used to be thrown away by cotton seed oil producers.
Nothing is wasted because the fibers from cotton are such an excellent raw material for paper.
To prepare the cotton for papermaking, it is first mixed with large amounts of water and sent to a piece of equipment called the beater. A beater is like a giant blender. In the beater, the cotton fibers are frayed between rotating steel blades and a lava bed plate, hence the term beaten to a pulp. The care taken with this step makes a huge difference in the quality of the paper. On the paper machine, this mixture is sprayed onto a wide belt of wire mesh called the fourdrinier, running at several hundred feet per minute.