Five Years of Raising the Bar in Paper Recycling.

Submitted by: The Two Sides Team March 18, 2012

This is the final report for the commitment period of the 2nd European Paper Recycling Declaration 2006-2010. Since 2004 the recycling rate has increased by 10% points due in part to the excellent work of the European Recovered Paper Council (ERPC). The economic recession which started in late 2008 continued in 2009 and 2010. As with any other statistics, those years should not be considered representative for the European paper recycling rate. Although paper consumption in 2010 was not as low as the year before (equal to consumption level of 1997), it was still much lower than before the economic recession started. As the recycling rate is the ratio between the recycling and the consumption of paper, the abnormal fall in consumption, whereas the recycling continued at high levels, resulted in unexpectedly high recycling rates both in 2009 and 2010. This effect will even out in the coming months and years and the paper value chain will return to the normal trend. The 2010 European paper recycling rate of 68.9% is higher than the target set by the ERPC, and the group is proud to report on impressive work completed to reach it, following the commitment it first made in 2000 to increase paper recycling in Europe.

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