Recycling Programs Essential to Maintain Supply of Essential Products
Today's guest blog is by Brian Hawkinson, Executive Director, Recovered Fiber, American Forest & Paper Association.
Over the last decade, the U.S. paper industry has achieved a consistently high recycling rate, meeting or exceeding 63 percent since 2009—a rate that’s nearly doubled since 1990, when the industry first set a paper recycling goal. Recently, AF&PA announced that the 2019 paper recycling rate was 66.2 percent. The rate represents a slight decrease from the 2018 rate, 68.1 percent, largely due to a reduction in U.S. recovered paper exports to China, but is still an increase from the 2017 recycling rate of 65.9 percent. The recycling rate for old corrugated containers (OCC) was 92.0 percent in 2019 and the three-year average OCC recycling rate is 92.3 percent.
Recovered fiber is essential to produce paper and packaging products. In 2019, more than 31 million tons of recovered fiber was consumed by U.S. paper and paperboard manufacturers. Nationwide, more than a third of the paper industry’s total fiber requirements are met using recovered material.
For…