Capacity is not what ’ s holding back recycled paper market development — lack of demand is . Plenty available — now let ’ s all use it !

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Kinsella, Stephen Michael
Copyright Year	2002
Abstract	years, recycled printing and writing paper is at a critical juncture. Demand has contracted sharply since Conservatree (San Francisco) estimated its high at 10 percent in the early 1990s. A dozen recycled paper mills and three deinking mills have closed within the past year and a half. The American Forest & Paper Association (Washington) now estimates the percentage of recycled fiber across printing and writing grades to be less than 5 percent, including preconsumer fiber. Why this downward spiral in demand and production at a time when recycled papers have achieved the highest quality and most competitive prices ever? One reason many major purchasers give for not buying recycled paper is concern that not enough capacity exists to support their jump into the market. They worry that their large purchases could max out the available paper supply, deplete recovered paper sources and drive up prices. To test this premise, Conservatree and the Alliance for Environmental Innovation ◆ most deinking mills are running at less than full capacity, with an average capacity utilization across all mills of 73 percent ◆ of the mills running at less than full capacity, all said they easily could expand their production of deinked pulp to meet an increase in demand ◆ the supply of recovered paper, the raw material for making deinked pulp, is not a significant concern to most deinked pulp producers. Most managers believe that, under current market conditions, recovered paper collection would quickly catch up to an increase in demand, even with continued exports of recovered paper. AF&PA reports that the recovery rate for printing and writing paper, the type of office and printing paper best suited for high grade deinking, is now 41 percent, so plenty is left to collect. Some deinked pulp producers note, how-
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://www.conservatree.org/paper/PaperTypes/deinkcapacity.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article