Report Finds More Residential Fiber Available

Moore & Associates has recently completed an update on its $mart$upply™ database with a study of 132 US local government curbside recycling programs.  The objective of the project was to seek out and quantify residential recycling programs that are under performing and will be good sources of both old newspapers and residential mixed paper (RMP) for the paper industry.

Of the cities studied, the average ONP recovery rate was 171 pounds per household per year, with a range from 11 to 724. For RMP, the average was 247 lbs/hh/yr with a range of 1 to 900. 

All of the cities in the database collect ONP, while only some collect RMP.

Bill Moore, president of Moore & Associates, stated, “There should be no shortage of recovered paper available for future domestic and export needs for residential fiber.  For the 20 lowest performing cities studied, an average of over 350,000 tons per year of recovered paper could be obtained if these programs are just brought up to the average U.S. level.” These twenty did not include any of the U.S.’s ten largest cities. In addition to identifying cities that would be good sources of residential fiber, the database project also examined what factors in the programs lead to lower recovery rates.

Moore & Associates is a market research and strategic analysis consultant to the paper recycling industry. Its worldwide practice is dedicated to recovered paper supply and demand.  For further information, contact Moore & Associates, (770) 518-1890 or visit our website at www.MARecycle.com .