European paper industry is on the barricade today outside the European Commission building

Titled ‘End-of-Waste = end of recycling?’, this action comes after a press conference was held by CEPI yesterday to set out its position that the EC proposal on End-of-Waste (EoW) criteria for paper fails to address the objectives of increasing the quality and availability of paper for recycling and will have an adverse impact on making Europe a resource efficient recycling society.

Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) supports CEPI’s position and in August CPI Director General, David Workman, wrote to Lord de Mauley at Defra to urge him to use his influence to reject the current Commission proposal and work towards EoW criteria that guarantees that the quality standards required by the reprocessor (i.e. the paper mills) are met.

The UK’s Paper Industry (along with those operating in all other Member States) fear losing control of an essential raw material if un-recycled paper and packaging is declared “end-of-waste and recycled” at the processing stage (i.e. by the collectors and sorters). Once processed, it can be transported across borders – even outside of the EU – to countries that may not have the same environmental protection measures in place as in our UK paper mills. Redefining the waste status of the material before it is really recycled means almost anything can happen with the material.

The point in the process where paper is reprocessed is the same point at which virgin pulp is introduced into the papermaking process and quality standards need to be virtually the same. This can only be assured if the mills themselves have ultimate control over quality standards.

The revised Waste Framework Directive declares that materials for recycling have “to meet the necessary quality standards for the relevant recycling sectors” whilst the current Commission proposal would define waste management companies as “recycling sectors”. In other words, the quality standards would be set by the collectors and sorters, not the paper mills actually using the material. The Paper Industry would have no say about quality specifications if this proposal is accepted.

Furthermore, the current proposal requires that collected paper for recycling, “including its constituents and in particular ink and dyes, shall not display hazardous properties”, which would be impossible for the collectors and sorters to comply with in their dry sorting operations. It is a challenging task even for the recycling paper mills to verify.