Recycling industry hits back at "overblown" stockpiling reports

The UK recycling industry has today urged businesses and councils to press ahead with their recycling efforts, arguing that reports over the weekend that the sector is in "crisis" are hugely "overblown".

The Mail on Sunday yesterday claimed that taxpayers are facing a multi-million pound bill to store 100,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard following the collapse late last year in the market for waste material.

The paper said that the price of mixed paper and cardboard waste has dropped from about £70 a ton to £10 in the past six weeks forcing many recyclers to stockpile material in the hope that demand will recover over the coming months. It added that some recyclers were now passing on this storage costs to councils and businesses by charging an extra £20 for every ton of paper and cardboard collected.

According to the Mail's calculations "the paper mountain could have already cost taxpayers about £2million – and that figure could double in the next three months as the pile grows from 100,000 to 200,000 tons at a rate of 8,300 tons a week".

However, industry experts dismissed the reports of burgeoning stockpiles as "overblown", arguing that demand for recyclable material was already recovering and that it still made more financial sense to recycle waste than send it to landfill.

The government's recycling advisory body WRAP said that it was still a better option both financially and environmentally for councils and businesses to recycle rather than send waste to landfill even if councils face higher storage charges temporarily.

It said that even if paper is sold for recycling at £10 a tonne that is still preferable than paying the average of £45, including tax, to send it to landfill.

Marcus Gover, director of market development at WRAP, added that the scale of the stockpiling had been taken out of context. "The growth of recycling in the UK over the last decade is a terrific success story," he argued. "With almost 10m tonnes of waste recycled in the UK every year storing 100,000 or even 200,000 tonnes amounts to a small percentage of that total."

The current stockpiles of waste paper and cardboard should also prove relatively shortlived, according to Philip Mossop, director at environmental and waste management specialist, The Green House.

"This month we will shift 400 tonnes of cardboard and this week we got a price of £36 a tonne for it, up from £25 a tonne last month," he said, adding that reports that demand for waste material from Asia had dried up completely were "exaggerated".

"Prices aren’t going to go back to the £80 a tonne level they were at, but you can still make a profit at the current price levels," he said. "[At £36 a tonne] the stockpiles can be cleared… if a recycler can't make money at that price they need to look very hard at their operating costs."

A spokeswoman for the Confederation of Paper Industries similarly argued that prices for recyclable materials were already recovering and that the current stockpiles should be cleared over the coming months. "Storing material for a long time is not ideal as it can damage the recyclate, but we don't see the situation continuing in the long term," she said. "Our advice to firms would always be to continue to recycle as it makes the most financial and environmental sense."