Paper's Future Direction

“Should the ‘fed’ regulate recycling?” Carol L. Raulston, vice president of government affairs for the American Paper Institute (API) (Washington, D. C.), asked an audience of paper recyclers at a recent conference sponsored by Pulp and Paper. Answering her own question, she said some in the industry would not be reluctant to say yes: "The prospect of having to make a product that can be legally sold in interstate commerce-that can successfully meet all of the potentially contradictory requirements-is what scares many of us, and perhaps makes us willing to call for the federal government to step in and stop all of this nonsense and use one very loud voice to tell us what to do."

She said, however, the industry as a whole clearly does not want the federal government to regulate the recycling of paper. Raulston explained: "We are not, yet, all close enough together in our view to arrive at a strong agreement that could form the basis of a federal law." Part of the reason is the barrage of suggested guidance and proposed mechanisms to regulate recycling; the industry has barely had a chance to keep up.

Raulston, who was speaking at the opening session of "Wastepaper II: Markets & Technologies in the '90s," a recent trade meeting in Chicago, summarized three factors that have prompted various levels of government to enter the recycling and solid waste arena with their legislative guns blazing: diminishing disposal capacity, increasing costs for disposal, and a growing U.S. environmental ethic (a recent API poll showed that 65 percent of those responding would sacrifice economic growth to achieve environmental quality). She said almost 40 states have some kind of purchasing preferences or guidelines for purchasing recycled-content products, as does the federal government. Also, four states have passed recycled-content requirements for newsprint users and more than half a dozen have reached voluntary agreements promoting recycling by newspaper publishers.

Many government entities are also implementing or considering use of financing mechanisms to direct recycling markets, particularly virgin materials taxes; taxes on packaging, diapers, newsprint, and other products; and advance disposal fees, said Raulston.

Other players are entering the arena with their own proposals, she reported:

A group of 11 state attorneys general is developing paper recycling recommendations.

Several groups, including the Northeast Recycling Coalition, the American Society for Testing and Materials, and the Recycling Advisory Council, are working on recommended definitions of recycling terms.

The Coalition of Northeastern Governors, through its Source Reduction Council, has developed a set of preferred packaging guidelines, which it has disseminated to 200 of the largest packaging manufacturers and users in the Northeast in hopes of encouraging voluntary changes in packaging design.

With all these efforts moving in all these directions at once, Raulston admitted, 4 6 uniform federal guidelines on definitions and labeling would indeed be very helpful.

"Are we rushing too fast into recycling? Can we learn from European and Asian experiences? The answer is a resounding ‘yes,’” said James McNutt, vice president of Jaako Poyry Consulting Inc. (Tarrytown, N.Y.), speaking on the direction North American postconsumer paper recycling is headed. "We need to take the time to examine the experiences of others so we can avoid potentially costly mistakes," he said. "The 1990s should be characterized as the decade of secondary fiber," McNutt suggested, noting that between 1989 and 1990, mill usage of secondary fiber increased by 11 million tons, or 13 percent.

He reported that Western Europe and Japan have reached recycling rates of 38 and 50 percent, respectively, for postconsumer paper, compared with only 30 percent in North America. "Obligatory" recycling programs, he noted, are necessary to achieve high recycling rates.

McNutt emphasized that papermakers should not try to "force recycled fiber into every paper and board grade," but should use it "where it is best suited" and where there is room to increase their usage of secondary input. Singling out tissue paper as an example of such an area, McNutt pointed out that the postconsumer recycled content of tissue paper in the United States and Western Europe is 44 and 40 percent, respectively, while in Japan this grade is made of 75 percent recycled fiber. He noted that the grades for which it is not yet economically efficient to use significant quantities of postconsumer fiber, such as printing and writing paper, show less dramatic Eastern vs. Western discrepancies in recycling rates.

McNutt stressed that expanded use of high technology is needed to make the most out of paper recycling, pointing to bleaching, con t removal, and mechanical treatment as examples of "maximum technology." In addition, he said, it may be necessary to increase use of the multilayering papermaking technology, a process in which recycled fiber is buried inside virgin materials.

The final important step to building the paper recycling rate, he said, is to "coach" customers on using recycled fiber-based products. "This requires excellent customer service," he explained.

Calling for a major expansion in office paper recycling, Fred Iannazi, president of Andover International Associates (Danvers, Mass.), told conference attendees that by 1995, 12. 1 million tons of office paper will be discarded annually in the United States, and only about 10 percent of this is likely to be recovered for recycling. (The total amount of U.S. office paper currently discarded annually is 9.6 million tons, said Iannazi.)

Iannazi said that by 1995, based on an assumed annual growth rate of 3.4 percent, approximately 24.0 million tons of printing and writing paper will be discarded and about 4.6 million tons of this will be recovered for recycling. About 1.2 million tons of what's recycled will be office paper, he noted.

Is it economically worthwhile to collect and reuse office paper? "This depends on the cost of furnish," said Iannazi. A study by Andover International reveals that "it is economical for existing mills to use office paper, that it may be economical to add lines, and that it is very costly for new mills to consider," he reported.

Iannazi predicted that U.S. printing and writing paper in general will average 11-percent recycled-fiber content in 1991, up from 5 percent in 1988. This translates into 2.5 million tons of additional capacity, primarily deinking, he estimated.

At the closing session of the conference, Steven Watson, corporate manager of strategic planning for Harris Group (Portland, Ore.), described changes in secondary fiber markets and technologies he suspects could develop by 2000.

Looking ahead to the turn of the century, secondary fiber will be "a very big business in the United States," he predicted, " with demand from a number of different product manufacturers." Supply, he added, will be "almost 100-percent controlled by large national waste haulers, material recycling facilities, paper companies, and profit-seeking municipalities." Independent scrap paper brokers will have "virtually disappeared or been purchased by waste haulers or paper companies, " he said, and the few that still exist will "control only about 10 percent of the market."

In 2000, 68 percent of the secondary fiber available in the United States will be recovered for consumption by domestic paper mills, exported, or otherwise reused, said Watson. The remaining 31.5 million tons of "discarded" paper will be disposed at a cost of more than $5.1 billion per year. He predicted that federal law will require a minimum of 40-percent postconsumer fiber content in new paper.

Watson suggested that some of the major factors that will have forced such recycled-content mandates will be the increase in two-wage-earner families; increased convenience paper packaging, growing from 3.9 pounds per person in 1990 to 4.5 pounds per person by 2000; continued landfill closures; reduction in the harvesting of virgin forests; and growing concern over global warming, which will encourage reduction in the consumption of energy and natural resources used in manufacturing. He predicted that national labeling standards, which will affect paper recycling, will also be implemented.

Use of 40 percent or more postconsumer-secondary-fiber furnishes in all grades, Watson forecast, will prompt major changes in processing and technology. He predicted mixed secondary fiber would become "the preferred furnish for new multi-ply building and paperboard products.”

Secondary paper sorting plants will become heavily automated by 2000, applying such technologies as robotics and electronic signature recognition of inks, Watson suggested. These technologies will cause "fiber losses m processing that will average 20 percent," creating more sludges to be handled in effluent-treatment, deinking, and reprocessing systems. Also, ink technologies will have to be changed to meet new environmental criteria and to improve electronic signature recognition, Watson said.

Papermaking machines will need to be rebuilt to produce more volume using secondary fiber as the incremental furnish, " said Watson, and additive systems will be "modified to use reprocessed secondary fiber residues as fillers, with polymeric chemicals added for strength." Also, according to Watson, the turn of the century will see improved deinking plants built to handle secondary ledger grades to satisfy the demand for printing and writing papers.

Watson suggested that anticipating and working toward some of these developments is vital to the “well-being and growth of our paper industry.”•

Recycling experts gathered in Chicago recently had their eyes on government intervention, changing markets, and technological developments as they pondered the future of the paper recycling industry.