In general, recycled paper is cheaper than virgin paper.
It is often impossible to tell the difference between quality recycled and virgin paper.

Recycled Paper Facts

PRE-consumer waste is the virgin paper trimmings, cut-offs, leader sheets and breaks that occur at the paper mill. These scraps are reused (recycled) by the mill in manufacturing paper (sort of like the 3-second rule when you drop a piece of candy)

POST-consumer waste is paper that has been used by the consumer (newspaper, magazines, product cartons...). These scraps are recycled through special de-inking and pulping facilities before re-entering the paper manufacturing mill.

Recycled paper requires only a fraction of the processing needed to make virgin paper, using 40-70% less energy.

Recycled fibers can be reprocessed 6-8 times before they become too broken up to bind together. Although virgin paper is the source, only 1/6th -1/8th of that resource is needed to replenish the loss.

The use of 100% post-consumer recycled paper guarantees
there has been no detrimental affects to forestry

Recycled Paper Savings
Recycling one ton (2200 lbs) of newspaper:

• saves 17 trees
• saves enough energy to power an average home for 6 months
• eliminates 3 cubic metres of landfill
• saves 31,780 litres of water
• creates 75 percent less air pollution
• takes 43 percent less energy than producing a ton of paper from virgin pulp
• creates 35 percent less water pollution
  
  (These are based on Canadian figures sourced from Environment Canada 1992)