Is recycled paper better for the environment then virgin fiber paper? Not necessarily.
According to a survey of professional media buyers, 70% of respondents perceived recycled paper to be better for the environment than virgin paper. It isn’t as straightforward as you might think. While recycled paper does reduce waste paper going to landfill, you must also consider paper’s full life cycle and not just the fibre source. Modern paper mills producing virgin fibre paper, whose energy source is nuclear, hydro or internally bio-fuelled, may well have a lower carbon footprint than a mill making recycled paper, powered by fossil fuels. And it’s important to remember that virgin fibre is always required to make recycled paper possible in the first place. For these reasons, it is very difficult to directly compare the environmental impact of recycled and virgin fibre paper. The paper industry has eight representatives in the UN’s list of the world’s 100 most sustainable companies, more than any other industry. Both virgin and recycled paper products can therefore have an equally