Recycled fibre in paper and paperboard means different things to consumers in different countries. In Europe and parts of North America, recycled fibre is a good thing, a way of doing something responsible for the environment. Others are concerned with impurities like ink residue and mineral oils that are present in the recycled material. Asian consumers seem more worried about the origin of the wood fibres rather than about manufacturing practices.
“Environmentalists and various organisations are striving to increase the content of recycled fibre to ‘save the forests’,” says Håkan Ekström, CEO of Wood Resources International LLC in Seattle. “Also, wholesalers and other intermediaries who sell paper sometimes demand a high recycled fibre content to reduce the risk of being branded eco-villains.”
Few consumers realise that fresh and recycled fibre has the same origin – trees. They are two kinds of fibres, dependent on each other, within the system of paper materials. If everyone stopped using fresh fibre the whole system would collapse, since the consumption of fresh fibre is the basis of the availability of recycled material.
When it comes to packaging, there has long been a trend to add more and more recycled fibre, although there are exceptions. These include food and luxury items like perfume, where fresh fibre is used to meet purity requirements and convey an impression of whiteness and quality. Furthermore, fresh fibre offers more flexibility and resilience thus enabling more advanced structural design.
One of the downsides of increasing the level of recycled material in a packaging board is that it generally lowers the protective properties. To compensate for this, the producer will have to increase the grammage of the board to reach a given level of protection. The increased grammage means higher packaging weight and lower efficiency in the printing, packaging, filling and logistical processes.
Johan Carlsson, the principal consultant at Pöyry, who has worked extensively with recycling and recycled fibre in the forest industry, says the arguments for or against recycled fibre are often the same.
“The environmental argument is used by advocates of recycled fibre and fresh fibre alike,” he says. “Some say that the carbon footprint, for instance, is lower for fresh fibre, while others claim the opposite. It all depends on how you measure it.”
Another important argument is that wood fibre, regardless of whether it is fresh or recycled, is a renewable raw material, and some manufacturers like to emphasise that they plant new trees for every package sold. In some countries, such as Sweden and Finland, there is a legal obligation for anyone who harvests forestland to regenerate the forest.
Ekström can see that the environment is an important consideration in markets like North America and large parts of Europe.
“Sometimes you can charge more for a product with a high recycled fibre content, even though the quality is actually lower,” he says. “These are often special products for niche markets where the environmental aspect is an important selling point.”
According to Carlsson, developments are largely cost-driven.
“The environmental argument is used to sell something or other, but production is governed more by the price of different fibre ranges and the availability of recycled and fresh fibre.”
It is hard to predict what the future trend will be. Ekström can see some strong pressure in many countries in Europe to add more recycled fibre.
At the same time, less recycled fibre is available, due in part to a decline in printed newspapers. A shorter supply of recycled fibre causes quality to fall and prices to rise, which would suggest that the percentage of fresh fibre is set to increase.
Created 22 October, 2015.