Little in life matches the comfort of relaxing in your special chair, reading your newspaper. Newspapers have the time and space to provide the entire story, and much more. Add a fireplace, and forget about it!

They say that nobody cares about yesterday's news, but yesterday's newspaper is a different story. Old newspapers have wonderful re-use potential, particularly for cows.

Of course, old papers can be recycled into paper once again. One study provides that over 37 percent of old newspapers that were recycled in 2000 became newspapers once again. The remainder was turned into products such as packaging for cereal and detergent, tissue, and other household products. Old newspapers were also turned into insulation for construction materials, egg packaging and apple crates.

However, agriculture provides an important very large scale newspaper re-use potential because studies are showing that newspapers can be used for bovine animal bedding. While humans might enjoy curling up in bed with our favorite paper, cows love curling up in the paper itself.

Dairy cow studies seem to be the most prevalent; however, the bedding is also suitable for horses, hogs and poultry. Also, pet shops and animal shelters have long used paper bedding for small animals. So this isn't just a cow thing, but on a large scale it appears that the practice has been most adopted with cows.

Penn State University tested newsprint for use as animal bedding in the mid-1960s and found that the concept works well with cattle. Since then, numerous commercial operations have adopted this practice.

Studies suggest that recycled newspapers are safe for animal bedding, even when the bedding is consumed by the animals. That's right, the cows do not just sleep in the paper bedding, they also eat the bedding. No apparent problems have been identified with animal health or milk quality as a result of this high fiber supplement . In fact, research indicates that a mixture of molasses and ground paper appears to be well consumed, perhaps giving meaning to the phrase "all the news that's fit to eat."

Newsprint can also be successfully mixed with manure for field fertilization. Fields fertilized with yesterday's news show no ill effects. While there had been concerns about the possibility of heavy metal buildup in the fields as a result of this practice, studies show that there really are no metal problems associated with this practice. I suspect the unfounded fear concerned metals that might have existed in the newspaper ink.

In any event, today these inks tend to be environmentally friendly. Best of all, old newsprint is very absorbent. Tests found that newsprint bedding will absorb almost twice as much water as straw bedding. Other tests have favorably compared newspaper absorbency with other materials.

If you do not recycle newspapers, you will be creating unnecessary mature tree destruction, and you will be adding much bulk to our already strained landfills. There are no good reasons not to recycle newspapers and plenty of really good reasons to do so.

The information provided in this column is written by Stuart Lieberman,a practicing environmental attorney, and is for general information purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be used in place of legal advice.

Stuart Lieberman, Esq., and IRED.Com, Inc., will not accept any responsibilty for any reliance on the information in this column or any damages whatsoever resulting from reading this column.