China plans to significantly increase the production of recovered paper in the coming years, according to recent forecasts of the China Paper Association.
Since 1994 the consumption of recovered paper in China has increased from 7.6 million tons in to 71 million tons in 2011 and it's only the beginning.
Currently the majority of Asian countries and in particular India and China remain heavily dependent on recovered paper, also due to lack of raw materials.
In case of China, in 2011, China used 56.6 million tons of recycled fiber-based pulp, accounting for 62 percent of the total pulp consumption in China. The results for 2011 have not been announced, however, according to China Paper Association, they will be comparable with the figures for 2011.
Chinese analysts believe that recovered paper has already become the main raw material of China's paper-making industry, which is reflected by the fact that in 2010, two thirds of the top 30 paper enterprises in China utilized recovered paper to produce paper.
At the same despite such impressive figures, China's recovered paper industry is still at a preliminary stage, says Jiang Xingsan, president of China Resource Recycling Association.
Although China recovered 43.5 million tons of waste paper domestically in 2011, the recovery rate was only about 45 percent, compared to the world average level of 57 percent.
