COST E48

Welcome to COST E48

COST E48 is a European network of universities, research organisations and industrial partners engaged in paper recycling. It generates a trans-european cooperation aiming at developing scenarios about the future of paper recycling within Europe and the role recovered paper and board will play as a raw material source for the European paper industry.

If you are interested to become a member of COST E48 or if you want to receive information about the work performed within this action please contact:

Jan-Erik Levlin

Harald Grossmann

The background

For many European country’s paper industries recovered paper is the most important raw material for both economical and ecological reasons. The demand for this resource has - throughout the last few decades - increased almost exponentially. Correspondingly the efforts to recover paper and board products after having been used were strengthened significantly. In spite of this – due to the strong demand - the economical advantage of recovered paper against virgin fibres gradually became smaller while quality was simultaneously getting worse.

The future of paper recycling depends on many difficult to assess factors, the most important of which are:
• world-wide fibre market developments
• quality requirements for new paper products
• society’s attitude towards recycling in general and products made from recycled raw materials in particular
• efficiency of recovery strategies and recycling technology.

As the paper industry belongs to the most capital intensive branches there is particular strong need for a sound basis for investment decisions. In this context the future of paper recycling is – without any doubt – a decisive aspect – not only for the European paper industry. Against this background, COST Action E48 was launched on March 30st 2005 as an Action within the COST Domain Forestry and Forest Products. The main purpose is to develop scenarios about the future of paper recycling in Europe.