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 organisations.
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. 1.9 million tonnes of paper were collected in 2009. This gives a collection ratio – volume of waste paper collected as a percentage of paper consumption – of 73.1 per cent, which may be compared to 61.8 per cent ten years earlier. If account is also taken into energy recovery in municipal waste incineration plants, the total amount of paper products recovered in Sweden rises to about 88 per cent.
Paper consumption is defined here as home sale + imports. 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.