Recovered paper has been used as a raw material by the UK paper industry for well over 100 years but primarily to feed the domestic papermaking markets and only where it made economic and market sense to do so. This continued to be the case up until the turn of the century when waste paper recovery increased dramatically with the UK governments focusing their attention on the matter to ensure they met various European Directive targets including Landfill and Packaging Waste. These strategies led to large scale increases in the collection of waste paper for recycling but at a time when the domestic UK paper industry was shrinking due to competitive pressures from high UK energy and regulatory costs. The upshot of these developments is that the UK has become a significant exporter of recovered paper (over 50% of what was collected in 2007) and to date this has been a successful area as there has been a huge increase in demand from the Far East, particularly China, which has swallowed up the excess that has been collected. This situation, and further increases in collection based on continued legislation, should be sustainable in the long term but relies on a number of assumptions as follows:
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The global economy continues to grow
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New papermaking capacity continues to be based primarily on recovered paper
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The cost of collecting and transporting recovered paper remains economic (particularly back shipping costs to the Far East)
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UK recovered paper can compete on quality and price with other countries with excess collection levels
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Legislation is not introduced that prohibits the movement of recovered paper as a waste material
PAS 105
