Despite the reported recyclate market downturn in the media, PaperChain Members continued to provide strong and healthy demand for quality recovered paper and board from the UK waste stream throughout 2008.

They recycled 3.2 million tonnes of quality recovered paper and board from various UK waste streams over the course of the year, the same quantity as recycled by these Members in 2007. This represents over 80 percent of UK domestic paper and board recycling and over 36 percent recycling of all UK paper and board collections. In carbon terms, this represents a benefit of almost 4.3 million tonnes to the UK environment against disposal of the material through landfill and incineration. Furthermore, the tonnage recycled by PaperChain Members is likely to increase significantly through 2009 with the acquisition and conversion of the m-real office-paper mill in Kemsley, Kent, to light-weight packaging materials by St Regis Paper Company.

These impressive figures make a mockery of any calls to abandon UK paper and board recycling in favour of energy recovery; this would undermine a healthy UK industry and put many direct industry jobs at risk, as well as companies and employment within the paper and board industry supply chain. The number of jobs required to service UK paper and board recycling is much higher than that of the energy recovery industry and brings significant economic and environmental benefits to the UK .

The UK paper and board industry is built around recycling with over 80 percent of its fibrous raw material being recovered paper and board. Without this valuable raw material, paper and board making would not be viable in the UK and would leave us importing more paper and board, damaging further the UK ’s trade balance. There is also significant investment in paper and board recycling coming to the UK over the next 2-3 years, all based on recovered waste paper and board. Any move to reduce the level of recovery for recycling of waste paper and board in favour of energy recovery would jeopardise these projects and curtail future investment opportunities.

PaperChain data clearly shows that the main UK recovered paper and board market issues in 2008 were confined to export routes where we have little control over global supply and demand. This supports the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI), Waste and Resource Action Programme and Environmental Agency statements that problems were limited to low-quality materials previously acceptable on the export market. PaperChain Members continued to provide a stable outlet for high-quality recovered paper and board.

Simon Weston, Chairman of PaperChain, said, "UK paper recycling mills continue to provide a reliable outlet for high quality recovered paper and board from the UK waste stream, but they will not buy material that leads to problems in the paper recycling process. UK mills must remain competitive, and low quality recovered paper and board leads to higher reject levels through the paper and board recycling process and adds cost to the mills."