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 2007 was 54 per cent. Despite extensive very sparsely populated areas, Sweden has one of the highest recovery rates in the world. 1.6 million tonnes of paper were collected in 2007. This gives a collection ratio – volume of waste paper collected as a percentage of paper consumption – of 77 per cent, which may be compared to 64 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 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.
Definitions
Collection means utilisation plus export minus import of recovered paper and the changes of recovered paper stock by mills and recovered paper merchants
Recycling rate means percentage of recovered paper utilisation compared to the total paper consumption
Paper consumption means domestic deliveries plus import of paper