Making the most of the 'Urban Forest'

The entire cycle is being improved: collection, sorting, repulping, end uses

Recycled fiber has been and will continue to be a major raw material for the paper and board industry. The main drivers for the use of recycled fiber are availability at an economic price; legislative and voluntary agreements resulting from environmental pressure; and continuously improving deinking and other recovered fiber processing technology.

Utilization of recovered paper reached 41.1 million tonnes in Europe in 2000, which gave a recycling rate of 49.8%. The situation is not uniform across Europe and this is explained by differences in market and industry structures, population density, transportation distances, education and attitude to recycling. The country variations in terms of collection and use means that a number of countries are exporters (of which Germany is the largest, exporting more than 2.5 million tonnes in 2000), and a number are importers (of which Austria is the largest, importing more than 600,000 tonnes in 2000).

The 56% commitment

The European paper industry is committed to increasing recycling further. A joint declaration launched by the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) and the recovered paper collectors and merchants (ERPA), the European Declaration on Paper Recovery (November 2000), states that the European paper industry is committed to having 56% of paper and board products consumed in Europe recycled by 2005.

The packaging sector is the biggest consumer of recovered paper and board in Europe with more than 60% of the total. Recovered paper use rates are also high in the newsprint and household and sanitary papers. Many European newsprint operations are already running on 100% recovered fiber. Although the printings and writing papers sector represents almost 40% of all paper and board production, it uses only limited volumes of recovered paper.

Europe is committed to having 56% of paper and board products consumed in Europe recycled by 2005. Photo courtesy Voith Paper Fiber Systems

This sector still relies mostly on virgin pulp. The recovery of paper in the US has increased steadily since 1990. More than 49 million tons of paper was recovered for recycling during 2000, which gives the US a recovery rate of 48%. Containerboard has the highest recovery and utilization by grade.

Canada has become a leading importer of recovered fiber, which for the most part is sourced from the US. It typically uses around five million tonnes/yr as part of the furnish for new products. Recycling is an expensive option for Canada as the paper industry was developed and built around virgin fiber use and most of the mills are located far from sources of recovered paper. Its relatively low population and large land mass add to the expense.

The Japanese paper industry used almost 18 million tonnes of recovered fiber in 2000, which accounted for 57.2% of the fibre used. The corrugated sector is the largest user. Shifts in Japan's environmental policies have resulted in the creation of a recycle-orientated society. Changes in existing packaging laws in April 2000 resulted in collected volumes for recovered paper exceeding internal recycled-based capacity.

Huge demand in China

The growth and expansion of the Chinese paper industry has fuelled a huge demand for recovered fiber. Such demand is being satisfied by imports that reached 5.8 million tonnes in 2001. The primary factor driving this sustained growth in imports has been the enormous investment in large, modern paper machines that are using recovered paper as the primary furnish. Corrugated based mills have shown the greatest growth in volume.

Recovery of waste paper and board continues to attract political and social attention in North America and Western Europe. For example, the European Commission in conjunction with governments of the Member States is introducing a range of measures to implement such policies and setting waste diversion and recycling targets that have to be met. Such moves will mean that recovery will continue to be ahead of utilization and the already large export surplus of North America is still forecast to expand. Some of the key countries within Western Europe will continue to develop and enlarge their export markets.

China and other countries within Asia will have a soaring recovered fiber deficit, as local paper and board production continues to develop and expand. They will not be able to find sufficient domestic collection for their raw material needs. It has been estimated that an additional four million tonnes will be required through to 2005. North American and European collection operations will further develop to service this market need. Imports of packaging grades are expected to grow the most - with mixed paper and board being sourced alongside old corrugated containers.

Improving collection methods

Increasingly, however, as recycling targets grow, there are determined attempts to improve the collection of material from households. Local authorities are the key mechanism for collection of household waste. In the UK, for example, there are three principal ways in which local authorities collect or receive recyclable materials:
* curbside collection schemes - where material is collected directly from the householder;
* 'bring' schemes to which the public can bring their recyclables to recycling banks;
* civic amenity sites provided by local authorities for the reception of excess household and garden waste.

The use of curbside collections is well established globally. They are for the most part still in their infancy in the UK. While they are generally referred to as being multimaterial collection schemes, paper tends to dominate the material collected.

The 'bring' schemes have traditionally been the single most important route by which household waste in the UK is recycled. Paper, predominantly newspapers, is the major material recycled.

Recycler responsibility

For the paper industry to be able to effectively use any recovered paper arising from such collection routes, then the material must not be mixed with any other household material and should be sorted at source by the householder. Such requirements require effective collection and segregation systems to be provided by local authorities.

However, recovered paper processing is moving from a highly source separated collection and manually separated system to one involving mixed incoming streams and state-of-the-art manufacturing tech- niques. To improve the economics of the operation, wastepaper collectors are now picking up large quantities of mixed paper and delivering them to sorting facilities for processing into graded paper stock.

To handle these new householder and commercial fiber streams, sorting facilities have to change. Progress has been made using mechanical separation equipment, such as special disc screens. However, such technologies are limited to the mechanical properties of paper such as size and weight. To meet this challenge research and development effort has been directed at developing high-speed optical based systems. One such system, the PaperSort system is now commercially available.

The continuing increase in the use of recovered fiber in newsprint and other printing and writing grades has seen a steady stream of new deinking plants and rebuilds around the world. It has also prompted development and refinement of the deinking process. These have included dual loop water circuits; high speed disc dispersion and pre and post flotation.

Technology begets technology

The continued developments in printing technologies have meant the arrival of new inks and toners in the recycling stream. To counter some of the potential adverse effects of such materials, research has enabled alternative resins to be developed that are more easily deinked.

The variability of incoming raw material and changes arising from seasonal and climatic variations have all been identified as factors that can affect the efficiency of deinking operations. Manipulation of deinking conditions and chemistry can limit such effects. Further minimization can be achieved through the design and flexibility of the deinking hardware. New systems such as Metso's OptiBright technology and developments from E & M Lamort are examples of developments of new deinking hardware. Future projections for deinking indicate that:
* Deinking will be further developed and used for newsprint manufacture world- wide, particularly in Asia. Older deink- ing lines in Europe and elsewhere will be continually upgraded and expanded.
* Continuing developments will enable further use of recovered fiber in mechan- ical fiber based publication grades.
* Tissue grades will continue to use deinked pulp. The market-led require- ments of properties such as softness and high absorbency may prevent the universal use of recovered fibers in all grades.
* The use of recovered fiber in woodfree printing and writing grades is not going to increase much above existing levels unless there is legislative intervention.

Developing technology helps maximize recycled fiber properties. This is a Voith Paper Eco Cell pre- and post-flotation deinking system in compact design at a 600 tonne/d DIP line

The final end use and market acceptance of a product depends on its fitness for purpose and cost. The quality of recycled fiber pulps is a function of the recovered paper grades, the processing techniques applied and the operating mode of the processing plant. Depending on their end use, recycled fiber pulps are subject to certain strength requirements and may only contain controlled amounts of filler. Recycled furnishes need to be free of adhesive contaminants (stickies) and for graphic paper end uses need to have appropriate optical properties.

Currently such criteria are met and recovered fiber and the resultant recycled fiber containing products have market acceptance in many grades. Such acceptance may however become increasingly difficult to meet as:
* end use demands become more stringent;
* incoming raw materials become more difficult to recycle;
* fibre properties deteriorate;
* a combination of two or more of such factors.

Recyclability will become increasingly important to ensure the increasing use or recovered fibers. It will need to be considered throughout the development process of new paper products to ensure that the recycling potential of the product is maximized.

The recycling of fibers is not new and as such the concerns on fiber quality and properties on recycling have been voiced as long as paper has been recycled. However, with the increasing trend to recover and use more recycled fibers the issues related to fiber deterioration and quality have taken on increased momentum. It is widely accepted, but not proven, that there is a maximum number of times a recycled fiber can be recycled. This number is strongly dependent on the fiber origin and morphology. However continual enhancements in recy- cling technologies will see the maximum rise. In addition, the papermaker can apply a number of processes to the recycled material that maximize the fiber properties and hence its papermaking potential. These include refining, fractionation, chemical reprocessing and high consistency pulping.

Recycled fiber has been an integral part of papermaking for many years. Many papermaking operations having relied on it as the sole or major part of the papermaking furnish. It has assumed even greater impor- tance in recent times as the world has become environmentally conscious and a greater emphasis has been put on recycling. The material is fast becoming a globally traded commodity with recycled fiber rich countries developing important export busi- nesses around its trade.

The Far East and notably China are currently eager recipients of the material to service rapidly expanding papermaking industries. Packaging, particularly old corrugated containers, is the highest traded material. Such changes in demand and require- ments have highlighted issues that require attention from the various players in the supply chain if the utilization of the 'Urban Forest' is to be optimized. Amongst the most notable are:
* the development of worldwide specifications for recovered paper;
* the development of effective collection and sorting systems;
* improvements in market acceptability of printings and writings paper containing recycled fiber;
* effective communication between all parties involved in the supply chain.

Graham Moore is strategic consultancy man ager at Pira International. This article is based on aspects of Pira International's on-going Strategic Futures Program of research. This exclusive program aims to assist Pira Members in their strategic planning by providing infor- mation and insight on a wide variety of issues across the sectors of paper, packaging and printing. Further details can be obtained by emailing graham@pira.co.uk