We are terrible at using recycled paper, and it's having a shockingly bad effect on the planet

The UK has a massive paper recycling problem. While we have become better at recycling, we remain dire at buying recycled paper products. As a result, according to the Recycling Association, the UK exports a staggering 8 million tons of waste paper every year. And since China recently banned all imports of waste paper, the price for recycled paper in the EU has collapsed due to the lack of domestic markets.

This raises questions such as, why do we not use more recycled paper products in the UK? And whose interests are we serving instead? Over the last 15 years, working as an eco-auditor, I encouraged my clients to switch to recycled photocopying paper. But the biggest problem I faced was that many of them thought that if their paper was FSC certified, then it was the best paper to buy or they thought that it meant that it was recycled paper. But the FSC paper that they were buying was likely to be the same European forest virgin (i.e. new) paper that they had always bought.

In the late eighties, there was a surge in green awareness and recycled paper became more popular. Much of the European paper industry responded by paying for their virgin paper to be certified as sustainable by the FSC. This was so successful in protecting the virgin print paper market, that printing and writing paper has a global average of only 8 per cent recycled content.

FSC certification meant that the paper was not sourced from trees felled in rainforests or old-growth forests. This is important but it does not mean we should keep felling trees in our temperate plantation forests. We can reduce that tree-felling by over 80 per cent by using recycled paper, as the paper fibres can be recycled over seven times.

EEPN estimates that the pulp and paper industry is responsible for a shocking 7.5 per cent of global carbon emissions, far higher than air transport.

Every mature tree stores up to a ton of carbon. Felling trees and dragging them along the forest floor damages the soil, releasing large amounts of carbon stored there over centuries by falling leaves and trees. Pulping raw wood takes twice as much energy to pulp than recycled paper.

Thus, when I saw a newspaper reporting that Penguin was printing the new Extinction Rebellion book “This is Not a Drill” on FSC paper, I was horrified that they were not using recycled paper. I got in touch with my XR colleagues and got invited to a meeting with Penguin, at which they agreed to publish it using FSC certified recycled paper. I was delighted, as it meant that about 4,000 trees needed to print the 100,000 copies of the book were saved.

So, I wrote about this little victory on my Facebook page. But one comment riled me. They said that getting it printed on FSC recycled paper was “meaningless”. I argued that it was an important victory and ensured XR were practicing what they preached. I therefore decided to check what the FSC Recycled Label actually meant. I was pretty shocked at what I found out.

FSC has three label certifications.

The main FSC label certifies that the paper is made from 100 per cent certified “sustainable wood”. Secondly, there is a weird FSC Mix label which says the wood is a mixture of FSC certified wood and uncertified wood. Finally, the FSC Recycled label certifies that the paper is made from reclaimed paper.

Originally, to be certified as FSC recycled paper, it had to contain 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper i.e. paper that has been reclaimed for recycling from homes and businesses after it has been used.

In 2007, that was changed to 85 per cent, to logically allow some pre-consumer reclaimed waste-paper to be included. (Pre-consumer reclaimed waste paper is paper that is a by-product of manufacturing or printing and has generally always been recycled.)

But then in 2011, FSC members, Proctor & Gamble and The European Confederation of Timber Industries successfully proposed at the FSC assembly that they consider reducing the threshold for post-consumer waste paper to zero.

At the next assembly in 2014, the FSC movement endorsed it, despite the combined objections of 15 environmental groups. FSC certified recycled paper now can have anything from zero to 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper, so long as all of it is reclaimed pre or post-consumer waste.

This led me to investigate the FSC structure. I naively presumed that FSC was a forest-protecting charity with a public supporter base dedicated to the cause. What I found instead was that the UK’s FSC corporate membership is dominated by the timber and consumer industries it is certifying.

Its corporate membership has included HSBC, Tetrapak, Boots, Kingfisher & The Timber Association. Its current UK chair is a Sainsbury’s executive. This gives them voting rights and the right to propose motions for policy-making assemblies. I was shocked to see this FSC membership system.

The Chinese ban on imported waste paper gives the UK government a unique opportunity to create well-paid jobs as part of the Green Covid-19 recovery plan. Dr Simon Ellin, CEO of The Recycling Association, told me that they condemned the revised FSC Recycled Paper standard and called on the government to legislate requiring paper sold in the UK to include a specific percentage of post-consumer waste-paper.

Such regulations introduced in the 1970s by US federal and state governments, led to the formation of a sustainable US recycled paper industry, as it created a stable market for the recycled paper products. And it is time for FSC to radically reform. If they want to be taken seriously, they have to be free from the vested interests being certified. We also contacted WWF, who officially endorse FSC, for a comment on the change in standard. They replied stating that they were aware of the change but made no comment on it.

We must stop levelling forests to create books, newspapers, office paper and bathroom tissue – and we all have a role in doing this. After Covid-19, pause, and ask your workplace paper-buyers to specify 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper for all their paper needs in future, whether it’s for photocopying, bathroom tissue or printing. We can, and must do better.