L. Lintu
Leo Lintu is Industry Planning Officer in the Forest Products Division of the FAO Forestry Department
Increasing levels of economic well-being are causing, as a side-effect, growing amounts of products that are being discarded after use. Especially in affluent societies, the amount of waste being generated has reached dimensions of great concern. Traditional disposal methods have become inadequate to cope with the mounting quantities of various kinds of refuse material. This, in turn is leading to the threat of significant environmental damage. Public awareness of the problem has been heightened and pressure groups are drawing the attention of governments and demanding action.
There is no doubt that much of the material in the waste stream, if properly separated and treated, could be recycled and used as a valuable raw material in the production of new goods. Recycling has therefore been recognized as an efficient means in efforts to reduce pollution at present caused by disposal of products after their primary use. One of the waste materials with particularly high potential for recovery and reuse is paper.
Savings in energy, in use of chemicals and in treatment of effluents make waste paper economically attractive to the paper and paperboard industry. Industries in many countries are also increasing the use of waste paper in view of the growing interest on the part of consumers in paper and paperboard products based on recycled fibres.
Given its industrial potential and the increasing popular and governmental concern for environmental protection, waste paper is being recovered in significant quantities. At the world level, in 1988 an estimated 75 million tonnes of paper and paperboard, approximately one-third of the total consumption of 224 million tonnes. was recovered for use, almost exclusively (more than 70 million tonnes) in pulp and paper production.
This volume can be thought of as the equivalent of the total output of some 300 large market pulp mills, which would need some 300 million m3 metres of pulp wood coming, on a sustained yield basis, either from 10 million ha of highly efficient and productive industrial plantations in tropical countries or from 60 million ha of well-managed natural forests in the Northern Hemisphere.
Nearly all recovered paper waste is recycled in the pulp and paper industry
Wood for pulping. Increased recovery and use of waste paper could help reduce resource pressure
In 1988, the world's largest paper-consuming country, the United States, recovered 23 million tonnes of waste paper, approximately 30 percent of its total paper and paperboard consumption of 77 million tonnes.
Japan, the second largest paper-consuming country, with a total consumption of paper and paperboard of 25 million tonnes in 1988, collected more than 12 million tonnes of waste paper, almost 50 percent of its consumption.
Among other major paper and paperboard consumers, China (14 million tonnes in 1988), recovered 3 million tonnes of waste paper, or just over 20 percent of its total consumption in the same year. The Federal Republic of Germany recovered almost 5 million tonnes of waste paper in 1988, or 40 percent of its 12-million-tonne total consumption.
There are a number of countries in which the recovery has reached or even exceeded 50 percent of apparent consumption of paper and paperboard, including Austria, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Most other countries, including both developed and developing countries, have a recovery rate which varies from 20 to 40 percent. In relatively few countries, including Bolivia, Jordan, Myanmar, New Zealand and Tunisia, the recovery rate of waste paper remains below 20 percent. It is noteworthy that although the recovery of waste paper is relatively high in many developing countries, most of the countries where the rate of recovery has remained below 20 percent are in fact developing countries.
Over the past two decades, waste paper recovery has grown, both in absolute teens and in relation to paper consumption, as evidenced in Figures 1 and 2. Can this trend be expected to continue, and what factors are likely to exert a significant influence? To answer these questions, successive sections of this article examine current sources of waste paper, potential for and constraints on increased recovery, and factors influencing utilization and trade.
The principal sources of waste paper comprise industries, trade, offices and households, with the largest share coming from converting industries, printing and publishing houses and major retail outlets. For example, box-manufacturing plants provide corrugated board clippings while supermarkets and retail shops discard large quantities of used corrugated containers. Paper-converting and printing houses are a source of trimmings, shavings, clippings, misprints and unsold books, newspapers and magazines. Offices generate large quantities of good-quality waste, including printing and writing papers and, especially in the recent past, growing quantities of waste from computer print-outs and photocopying machines.
Waste paper from industrial and commercial sources has the advantage of concentrated availability and predictable quality, and it is therefore natural that recovery from these sources is relatively well developed and in some cases even fully tapped. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, approximately 6570 percent of waste paper recovery comes from industrial sources. Indeed, in some countries waste paper from industrial sources is fully recovered, and potential for increases is directly linked to further growth in paper and paperboard consumption. For example, in Sweden, where the overall recovery rate in 1988 was 42 percent, about 70 percent of corrugated and solid boxboard waste, practically all overissued newspapers and 55 percent of old newspapers, magazines, telephone directories and catalogues were recovered.
The "living room" connection
On the other hand, there appears to be substantial potential for increased recovery from private households. "Living room waste", e.g. old newspapers, magazines and direct advertising leaflets, is a clean and clearly definable waste paper grade which can be used in the paper industry provided that it is not mixed with other household refuse and does not get contaminated in the recovery process. Successful recovery of living room waste assumes the active collaboration of households in keeping waste paper separate from other refuse and efficient, regular collection.
FIGURE 1: Waste paper recovery rates in 16 selected countries, 1972-88(Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Finland, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America)
Again using the example of Sweden, it is noteworthy that some 40 percent of all recycled waste paper is currently supplied by households in the form of old newspapers, magazines and advertising materials. The situation is reported to be much the same in Finland.
''Kitchen waste ", i.e. various food and non-food packaging materials, is often made of long-fibre chemical pulp and therefore would be a valuable material for recovery. The difficulty in recovering kitchen waste arises from its contamination by direct contact with food. Furthermore, many of the packaging materials which are used in direct contact with food are combinations of paper-making fibres and various coating materials and films. Consequently most of the kitchen waste cannot, at the moment, be recovered at reasonable cost.
In fact, there are a number of constraints that limit the practical achievement of theoretical levels for recovery of paper 1972-88 waste, at both household and industrial levels.
FIGURE 2 Waste paper recovery rates in selected developing countries, 1972-88
It is estimated that approximately 20 percent of total consumption of paper and paperboard cannot be recovered, as it is totally destroyed in use (e.g. cigarette tissue); is contaminated beyond possible reuse (many household and sanitary tissue products); or remains more or less permanently conserved (printed books).
A second constraint is low population density in some countries, which makes recovery of waste paper difficult to organize and increases the costs beyond acceptable levels. Other limitations on increased collection can be social. In some affluent societies it is difficult to convince households to separate waste paper from other refuse materials, which would be a precondition to keeping the material clean and economical in cost. In this respect, however, the increasing awareness and concern of the general public regarding environmental matters is contributing to changed attitudes.
In many developing countries recovery of waste paper for paper production is limited owing to other forms of reuse. Used newspapers, magazines and books are passed to the local packaging paper market and converted to grocery bags or used as wrapping paper. Envelopes are turned around and used for a second time. Corrugated boxes are used several times to package goods. For instance, in Indonesia, retail shops that use old newspapers for wrapping offer better prices for recovered newspapers than the paper mills. As a result of the sequence of multiple uses, only very small quantities of paper are available for recovery, and the quality has often been reduced to a poor or unusable condition.
Collecting waste paper in Costa Rica
Despite the above-mentioned constraints, however, waste paper recovery is expected to increase substantially over the next 10-15 years, perhaps even reaching 40 percent of total world paper and paperboard consumption by the year 2000. This likely increase will be driven by two motivating forces: financial and legal incentives resulting from heightened concerns for reduction of solid waste and improved efficiency in use of forest resources; and the continued and even increasing value of waste paper as raw material for the pulp and paper industry.
Pressure from environmental groups
There is strong and growing pressure from public interest groups and governments to increase the recycling of waste paper. The environmental organizations emphasize the conservation of natural resources; government and local authorities are concerned with finding alternative outlets for various components of solid waste, including waste paper. This pressure has resulted in a number of legal and financial incentives.
In the United States in 1989 the Congress amended the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, inter alia to focus more attention on recycling. Several states have already established goals for recycling, and in a number of cases proposals have been made to oblige newspaper publishers to use newsprint with a specified minimum content of waste paper. At local levels responsibility for waste paper recovery is being taken over by municipal authorities, thereby changing the economic implications of recycling and expanding the quantities available.
In Sweden the collection of waste paper at source in households, shops and department stores was made obligatory by law in 1975; the recovery rate has risen from 28 percent in 1975 to 42 percent in 1988. In Japan, where local authorities are facing serious problems of space and increasing costs in disposing of solid waste, waste paper recovery is promoted by granting subsidies. In the Federal Republic of Germany a national law on waste recovery makes regional authorities responsible for its disposal.
In the Netherlands, where the highest rate of waste paper recovery in Europe has been achieved, several initiatives have been taken to further increase recovery, including the granting of financial aid for the collection of waste paper under certain conditions. In Denmark, under a law passed in 1987, local authorities of boroughs with over 2000 inhabitants are compelled to recover waste paper from households, either by collecting it themselves or through private enterprises. Furthermore, each office building producing more than 100 kg of waste paper a month has to collect it for recycling. Local authorities finance the disposal of waste paper through a special tax
Industrial use of waste paper
The most significant impetus for increased recovery and utilization of waste paper, however, will be its continued and potentially increasing value to the paper and paperboard industry as a raw material. By far the main end user of waste paper is the paper and paperboard industry, absorbing some 97-98 percent of the total quantity recovered. Waste paper currently represents more than 30 percent of the total fibre used in paper and paperboard production. The advantages of waste paper as a source of fibre in the paper industry include, for example, reduced effluent discharges, as only slushing (as opposed to pulping and slushing from virgin fibre) is needed to disintegrate waste paper into fibres; water consumption is less than half that needed in chemical pulping, leading to savings in water costs; use of chemicals is minimal in waste paper processing as compared with chemical pulp production, with resulting reduction in effluents and chemical costs; mechanical processing of waste paper into fibres is also limited and results in savings in energy costs.
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Uses of waste paper in paper and paperboard production Waste paper is a very versatile raw material. For many paper and paperboard products it is possible to use waste paper as the only fibre. Even paper products which are generally based, mainly for cost and quality reasons, on the exclusive use of virgin fibres - mass produced printing and writing papers, newsprint and kraft liner board - could use limited quantifies of waste paper in the fibre furnish without affecting their basic quality characteristics. However, different types of waste paper lend themselves to use in the production of various end products. Corrugated, solid container and sack kraft waste is the most widely used waste paper grade category In a number of countries it represents over 40 percent of total waste paper used in the paper industry. The long unbleached kraft pulp fibres derived from this type of waste paper are used in the production of packaging papers and paperboards such as linerboard and fluting medium. The fibres obtained from recycled newspapers and magazines, telephone directories, brochures etc. are used in the production of newsprint, tissue and boxboard. This grade of waste paper is particularly important in Sweden, where it represents: almost half of the waste paper used in the: paper industry. In Finland, Japan, Madagascar and Zimbabwe, the share of this grade category exceeds one-third of the total waste paper used in the paper industry. Waste paper composed of wood-free printing and writing papers, computer print-outs and other products derived from bleached chemical pulp amounts to less than 10 percent of the total waste paper. There are, however, several countries, including the United States, in which its share exceeds 20 percent of the total. This grade-category provides substitutes for bleached chemical pulp and is used in the production of tissues, printing and writing papers, and boxboards. The structure of the paper industry of a given country has a large impact on the potential for use of waste paper. For example, in countries with large export-oriented paper and paperboard industries, the use of virgin pulp as the main source of raw material predominates. This is illustrated by the difference between the waste paper utilization rates in the major pulp. exporting and pulp-importing countries shown in--the Figure. However. it is noteworthy that the data in the Figure straw the continued growth of waste paper utilization in all the countries concerned. On the other hand, waste paper cannot be used indefinitely. Each time paper is recycled, the cellulose fibres contained in it become broken into shorter pieces and the strength of the bond between them is reduced. Eventually, the fibre completely loses the characteristics necessary for paper- production. Furthermore, in addition to fibres paper contains coating and filler material (sometimes up to one third of total weight) which is not recovered in the recycling process. Therefore, the paper and paperboard industry will always require a continuous injection of virgin fibre. Trends in waste paper use in selected countries, 1078-88 (percentage of waste paper in total fibre) Major European Importers
Major non-Europeans waste paper importers (Note: USA total imports exceed = total exports)
Major Exporters
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The paper industry in developing countries has further reasons for using waste paper. The small domestic market in many of these countries prevents the establishment of large enough wood pulp production units to supply otherwise viable paper and paperboard industries. It is noteworthy that this is true even in some countries that have adequate wood resources. Waste paper, with the great variety of its grades, offers an economically attractive alternative that is at least partly available from domestic sources. Waste paper is also used in developing countries in paper making to improve the strength characteristics of domestically produced nonwood fibre pulps, for example those from agricultural residues.
Another factor which is likely to have significant impact on the total use of waste paper in paper and paperboard production is changes in regulations that specify certain types of fibres for the products. Perhaps the best example of such regulations is the specifications for packaging materials that can be used for rail and road transport in the United States.
FIGURE 3: Waste paper exports from the United States in 1988
Under Rule 41, boxes used in shipping must satisfy certain criteria for burst strength. These stringent rules have inhibited the increased use of testliner, a waste-paper-based linerboard, in the United States, and have therefore had an overall limiting effect on the use of waste paper in that country.
Attempts are currently being made to modify Rule 41 to specify stacking strength rather than burst strength, reflecting changing shipping techniques, and in particular increased containerization. Stacking strength which relates more to rigidity than burst strength, can be achieved at reduced cost by using linerboard containing recycled fibre rather than only virgin kraft pulp. Thus, if Rule 41 is modified, producers of linerboard will have an incentive to increase use of recycled waste paper.
The increase in the production of testliner will have a major impact on the demand for waste paper composed of corrugated board clippings and old corrugated containers, which at the moment are largely exported. Thus, this change could have important repercussions not only on waste paper recovery and utilization in the United States but also in countries which export packaged goods to US markets, and be of particular importance in countries which currently import waste paper from the United States.
Approximately 15 percent of recovered waste paper - some 10 million tonnes in 198X - enters international trade; more than 50 percent is currently supplied by the United States. Figure 3 shows the main destinations of US exports. It is noteworthy that three developing countries - Mexico, the Republic of Korea and China's Taiwan Province - each imported more than 1 million tonnes of waste paper from the United States in 1988.
The rest of the countries that export waste paper concentrate on markets within their own geographic region. In Europe, the four largest waste-paper-exporting countries - France, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom - collectively exported some 2.7 million tonnes in 1988. However, the same countries imported 2.1 million tonnes, which means that their total net exports amounted to only 600000 tonnes. The waste paper trade within other regions has remained relatively small.
In terms of imports, a number of countries are heavily dependent on imported waste paper. In Austria, Canada, Madagascar, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Pakistan, Thailand and Tunisia, waste paper imports represented from one-third to more than half of the total waste paper used in the paper industry in 1987-88.
Some of the countries are more heavily dependent on one supplier country than the others. For instance, imports to the Republic of Korea in 1988 came almost exclusively from the United States. In Austria, which is also heavily dependent on waste paper imports, over half of the supplies came from the Federal Republic of Germany.
Many of the developing countries import waste paper not only to meet the fibre requirements of their paper industry as such but also to improve the quality of the total fibre used in their paper industry. The quality of the domestic waste paper is often low, owing to a high content of short virgin-fibres and contamination caused by multiple uses. It is therefore very important for these countries to be able to import virgin fibre-based waste paper.
The potentially dramatic increase in the use of waste paper within the United States could have equally dramatic effects on the paper production capacity of countries that currently depend heavily on US exports. Even if recovery in the United States were to be funkier increased (the paper industry association has set a national goal of 40 percent waste paper recovery for domestic recycling and export by the end of 1995), it is highly likely that the best-quality waste paper would be retained for domestic recycling.
The world is becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental implications not only of production processes but also of products discarded after use. The recycling of waste materials as a means of tackling the solid waste problem is attracting growing interest.
Paper waste, one of the most visible components in the solid waste stream and also one of the most versatile, is already being recovered in significant quantity for use by the paper and paperboard industry, and funkier increases are likely.
Mixing paper with virgin-fibre pulp in appropriate quantities does not affect the quality of final products, which remain comparable to fully virgin-pulp-based products. The development in processing technologies in the use of waste paper as the only source of fibres has also made it possible to produce high-quality paper and paperboard products for a wide variety of end uses.
Current recovery of waste paper is concentrated to a large degree on industrial and trade sources in developed countries from which the waste paper can be recovered in a sorted form before it gets mixed with other refuse in the waste stream. Households are, however, the major sources for increased recovery.
The need to solve solid waste problems, pressures from environmental activist groups, and the interest of the main consumer of waste paper - the paper industry - in using larger quantities of waste paper will contribute to a continuing increase in its recovery. The recovery and use of waste paper are expected to continue to grow faster than paper consumption and production in the world.
