Market Demand

Paper and board customers’ constantly augment their requirements and want stronger, cleaner, lighter papers that can accommodate top quality printing.  To ensure recycled papers have a place in the future they must be able to compete in the market place with their virgin fibre equivalents. To this end the paper industry increasingly requires a high quality raw material and is unable and unwilling to accept contaminated recovered paper that will damage or slow down the papermaking process making it less competitive. This is not a UK phenomenon but a global requirement.

If recovered paper comes into contact with food that has leaked from tins or bottles then the fibres may get contaminated and damaged and the longer the length of contact, the greater the potential for the fibres to be unusable. The overriding principle for supplying a high quality recovered paper for efficient reprocessing is that the collected material should be protected from contamination as much as possible.

Shards of glass, metals, adhesives, plastics and grease damage papermaking equipment that cost hundreds of millions of pounds to install. They also lead to an inferior paper product that is unacceptable to customers.

Large export markets have opened up in the Far East, most notably in China, and low quality loads are increasingly being rejected. Generally what is unacceptable in the UK is unacceptable in large quantities elsewhere.

It does not make economic or environmental sense to mix papers with contaminated recyclables only to separate them out again, or to use more chemicals to treat contamination when it can be avoided. Intense cleaning techniques have to be employed when contamination occurs. These techniques damage fibres, reduce the yield and increase the amount of unusable residues. All of the above leads to higher carbon outputs from the paper mill either directly through process inefficiency or indirectly through waste production or supply chain requirements.

PaperChain calls on Government to incorporate quality criteria into Local Authority recovery and recycling agreements and to encourage them to introduce collection schemes that keep paper separate from other materials.

Building Sustainability into Paper Recycling | PaperChain's Position | The Current Situation