China's Demand For Recycled Wastepaper: A Blessing And A Curse For The World's Forests

China's paper industry has built-up a massive recycling capacity that is shielding forests worldwide from destruction by supporting a strong international market for wastepaper as an alternative to pulpwood, according to a new report released by Forest Trends, a leading international forestry organization.

The Forest Trends report, Environmental Aspects of China's Papermaking Fiber Supply, notes that today about 60 percent of the fiber used to manufacture paper and paper board products in China is derived from wastepaper--a substantial portion of which comes from the US, Europe, and Japan. In the last ten years China's wastepaper imports increased by more than 500 percent--from 3.1 million metric tons in 1996 to 19.6 million metric tons in 2006--with most of that growth occurring between 2002 and 2006.

But the report warns that wastepaper alone is not sufficient to keep up with China's production demands, as high quality pulp and pulpwood are also being used to supply international buyers with high quality paper. The report finds that the same explosive growth that's created such a strong market for wastepaper is also boosting China's demand for pulp and pulpwood from developing countries already struggling to contain illegal and destructive logging. For example, China today buys some of its pulp and pulpwood from Indonesia and Eastern Russia where illegal, environmentally rapacious logging is widespread. And any increase in demand could exacerbate problems in those regions.

"China is by far the world's biggest consumer of wastepaper and that's a good thing because in the last four years alone, China has prevented 65 million metric tons of wastepaper from heading to landfills in the US, Japan, and Europe," said Brian Stafford, the lead author of the report and an expert on the international pulp and paper industry. "Just last year, China's use of wastepaper instead of trees to make paper products probably saved 54 million metric tons of wood from being harvested for pulp."

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