Increasing Paper and Cardboard Recycling: Impacts on the Forest Sector and Carbon Emissions

• Published in: Environmental modeling & assessment Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 189 - 200
• Main Authors: Lorang, Etienne, Lobianco, Antonello, Delacote, Philippe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.04.2023; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applications of Mathematics; Carbon; Cardboard; Climate change; Climate change mitigation; Complementarity; Earth and Environmental Science; Economics and Finance; Emissions; Emissions (Pollution); Environment; Forest resources; Forests; Global temperature changes; Humanities and Social Sciences; Math. Appl. in Environmental Science; Mathematical Modeling and Industrial Mathematics; Natural resources; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Paperboard; Pulp & paper industry; Recycling; Recycling (Waste, etc.); Recycling industry; Wood; Wood products; Q54; Q23; GHG emissions; L73; Recycling; Forest sector; Bioeconomic model; Q53
• ISSN: 1420-2026; 1573-2967
• DOI: 10.1007/s10666-022-09850-5

Recycling is emerging as both a viable alternative to extraction in many industries and a cornerstone of the circular economy. In this paper, we assess the role of paper and cardboard recycling on the forest sector, from both an economic and carbon perspective. For this purpose, we add the recycling industry to an existing forest-sector model in an attempt to capture its effects on other wood products and the overall forest resource. As the forest sector has an important potential for climate change mitigation, this model allows us to assess the effects of increased paper and cardboard recycling on the availability of the natural resource and the carbon balance of the forest sector. We show that these results are strongly linked to the hypotheses of substitutability and/or complementarity of recycled pulp and virgin pulpwood. Although we find increased emissions at the pulp sector level, the effects on emissions in other wood products are small. When pulp products are considered substitutes, we find the impact on total net sequestration to be positive. In the case where pulp products are considered complements, we find the impact on total net sequestration to be negative.