Ameican Notes TRASH

Few products make more trash than yesterday's newspapers. Thus when New York's Suffolk County last week approved a bill requiring newspapers to use paper with a 40% recycled content by the end of 1996, the intent was unassailable. But there is a hitch: not enough mills are reprocessing the newsprint that readers already send to recycling centers.

New York State illustrates the predicament. Each year New Yorkers turn in 490,000 tons of newsprint for recycling (out of 1.4 million tons they purchase). Yet the area's newspapers use only 130,000 tons of recycled material yearly. Since the entire Northeast has just one recycling plant, much of the waste paper is shipped abroad for re-use. Suffolk County legislator Maxine Postal, who sponsored the tougher bill, claims that its whole point is to entice paper companies to add de-inking facilities (cost: $40 million to $80 million each) or to build new recycling plants (at $450 million apiece).