§ Mr. SayeedTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the effect that recycling has had on the pulpwood industry over the last five years. [74571]
§ Mr. WilsonThe amount of recycled fibre used in the pulpwood industry in recent years has increased significantly and as a result the demand for virgin pulp has remained fairly static even though demand for paper has increased significantly.
In 1983 UK paper mills used 1.8 million tonnes of recovered fibre, rising to 4.3 million tonnes in 1996 and peaking at 4.9 million tonnes in 2000. In 2001 the 87 pulp, paper and board mills in the UK used 4.6 million tonnes of recovered fibre in producing 6.2 million tonnes of paper giving a 74 per cent. utilization rate for recovered fibre, the highest level in the EU after Spain. The growth in the use of recovered fibre has generally mirrored growth in production 692W tonnages, whereas the amount of primary UK produced pulp and imported pulp used in the production of paper has remained relatively static since 1990 with between 0.5–0.6 million tonnes of UK produced pulp and between 1.6–1.7 million tonnes of imported pulp being used annually.
A voluntary agreement by the Newspaper Publishers Association to increase the recycled content of newsprint to 60 per cent. by 2001 was achieved ahead of schedule. An average 63.5 per cent. recycled content was obtained. This coupled with the targets defined in the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations 1997 (Amendment) has significantly contributed to the leading UK position. These regulations facilitated an investment of £73 million into the paper industry between 1999–2001 from the sale of Packaging Waste Recovery Notes (PRNs) and Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERNs).