Trust in paper recycling folds
The reputation of Japan’s paper industry lay crumpled last month.
Market leader, Oji Paper, admitted it had lied for over ten years about the quality of its recycled products.
This follows the country’s second-biggest paper company, Nippon Paper Group, also admitted false claims. They claimed recycled fibre volumes as high as 50%, but it was actually between 5% and 10%.
The UK paper industry has confirmed its quality levels. The Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) has backed the figures it publishes on levels of recycling within the UK.
A CPI spokesperson said: “There is no shortage of recovered fibre in the UK market - indeed, over 50% is currently exported - and as such, UK mills have no reason to overstate the percentage of recovered fibres their product contains.”
Newspaper printed in the UK are on an environmentally sound, renewable paper from managed softwood coniferous forests, mainly in North America and Europe. Here, for every tree cut down, two or three more are planted.
In 1991, the UK publishers set a target of achieving 40% recycled content in newspapers by the year 2000. The industry met this target four years ahead of schedule.
In 2006, recycled paper made up 80.6% of the raw material for UK newspapers.
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