Recovery of paper products The recovery of paper products varies widely from country to country. Among the reasons for these differences are the market potential for the collected material and the efficiency of each country's national and local collection organizations. Globally, the average recovery rate in 2008 was 54 per cent. Despite extensive very sparsely populated areas, Sweden has one of the highest recovery rates in the world. In 2009, 1.4 million tonnes of paper were collected and the consumption of recovered paper was 1.9 million tonnes. This gives a collection ratio - volume of waste paper collected as a percentage of paper consumption - of 73 per cent, which may be compared to 61 per cent ten years earlier.
Paper consumption is defined here as paper production + imports - exports. This means that consumption includes volumes that are further processed in Sweden before being exported (e.g. empty corrugated board boxes), but it does not include imports of materials such as printed newspapers or packaging with contents. This definition has been agreed at international level given the nature of the available statistics. For specific grades of paper, the calculations of consumption can be more precise at country level.