Paper recycling slump doesn't stop investment in plants. (Capitol Fiber Inc., waste paper processing plant in Dundalk)(Inside: Environmental Issues)

New Dundalk plant set for industry's next boom

If you think all the old paper -- the newspapers, junk mail, magazines and cereal boxes -- you send out to be recycled every week is recycled, think again.

"Paper recycling does not take garbage and turn it into a silk purse. One must be careful of the quality of the resource," said Bruce Fleming, president of Canusa Corp., an independent waste paper broker. "If the paper becomes too costly to sort out properly, it will probably be sent to a landfill."

Fleming should know. He has been in the paper recycling business since he was a student at Princeton University in the 1970s. He ran the school's recycling program and worked with a newsprint mill, the Garden State Paper Co. By the late 1970s, Garden State mills …