Problems of Paper Recycling in Western Europe: Part 6

An interesting issue related to paper-recycling strategies is the economic potential of waste paper for energy production. For some national economies it could be more profitable to use waste paper for energy production than to use it as raw material for domestic paper production or to export it. Depending on the proportion of wood fibers, the heat content of waste paper is from 14 to 17 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), which makes 1 tonne of waste paper equal to about 0.4 tonnes of oil. We cannot, at present, generalize the relative advantage of recovering waste paper for its energy versus its fiber value, since the most economical utilization of waste paper depends on which fuels it would replace and the type of paper produced from it. Such calculations can be made in the planned full-scale study on recycling of paper. However, it should be pointed out that waste paper for energy would be a clean source of energy if some of the chemicals and heavy metals used in the pulp, paper and board, and printing process were replaced with other, more benign materials.