European Paper Industry’s Position Accepted

The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) Technical Board has passed a resolution clarifying the Commission’s mandate on solid recovered fuels standard, in which it states that separately collected paper is excluded from the solid recovered fuels standard. This is completely in line with the Confederation of European Paper Industries’ recommendation, as argued last November.

Last August the European Commission issued a mandate for CEN on solid recovered fuels, which could have been interpreted as if it promoted the burning of paper as opposed to encouraging its recycling. The purpose of this standard is to encourage the use of waste as fuel, which in itself forms part of the overall promotion of renewable energy sources in order to combat climate change and increase the EU’s energy self-sufficiency. While the European pulp and paper industry is very much in favor of this development, it had serious problems with what is constituted as ‘waste to fuel’, because the risk of this leading to market distortions is great.

The Paper Industry wrote a letter to the various European Commissioners to argue its case in point, and also issued a statement and press release on the matter, requesting the exclusion of recovered paper and board collected separately and suitable for recycling from the solid recovered fuels standardization.

The reason for the decision by the CEN Technical Board to exclude recovered paper and board from the solid recovered fuels standard was the existence of the Standard EN 643, The European List of Standard Grades of Recovered Paper and Board. The EN 643 Standard Grades List was adopted in December 2001, and is aimed at the industry to assist in the buying and selling of this raw material intended for recycling by the paper and board industry.