Waste paper is often dumped in landfill sites, when recycling makes economic and environmental sense. Photograph: Richard A Brooks/AFP
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With Valentine's day this week, I thought I'd investigate the value of recycling paper and card. Judging by recent comments to this site, I am probably preaching to the converted.
However, of the 4.6m tonnes of paper and card that is thrown away by households in the UK each year, only one-third or so is recycled. The rest is sent to landfill sites where it is rots and produces the powerful greenhouse gas methane. So there is still plenty of room for improvement.
In the UK, virgin paper is usually made from wood pulp. Most of the energy used to manufacture it is needed for the pulping process, so making paper from recycled material results in less energy consumption. Recycling one tonne of paper saves a similar amount of electricity to that consumed by a three-bedroom house in a year. This equates to a saving of 1.3t of CO2. Plus, not sending paper to biodegrade in landfill sites cuts methane emissions.
There are also other environmental benefits to recycling paper. In recent decades, Scandinavia has replaced vast swathes of richly biodiverse natural boreal forest with intensively managed secondary forests or plantations in order to satiate our need for wood pulp to produce paper. This has endangered many plant and animal species. For every tonne of paper recycled, some 30,000 litres of water are also saved. And because recycled paper is not bleached, fewer polluting dioxins are released into the atmosphere.
As ever, though, cutting down on paper use has to come before recycling. Are you guilty of taking restaurant flyers and brochures that come through your letterbox and putting them straight in the bin? If so, put a sign up requesting "no circulars". Choosing paperless statements and billing options with banks and utilities can also cut down on waste, as well as simplifying your filing. And try, wherever possible, to avoid products with unnecessary packaging.
For the paper recycling industry to work, there needs to be a demand for its products, so make a point of buying recycled paper items. The range of recycled products may be wider than you think. For example, recycled telephone directories are used to make egg cartons, cat litter, jiffy bags and animal bedding. For pointers on where to look for recycled items, there is a recycled products guide here
So what do you think we can do to achieve a 100% paper recycling rate? How good is your local authority at recycling paper? Tell us your thoughts
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