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

Etienne Lorang (), Antonello Lobianco and Philippe Delacote
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Etienne Lorang: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres

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Abstract: Recycling is emerging as both a viable alternative to extraction in many industries and as a cornerstone of the circular economy. In this paper, we assess the role of paper and cardboard recycling on the forest sector, both from 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.

Keywords: Forest sector; Recycling; GHG Emissions; Bioeconomic model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04690101v1
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Published in Environmental Modeling & Assessment, 2023, 28 (2), pp.189-200. ⟨10.1007/s10666-022-09850-5⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04690101

DOI: 10.1007/s10666-022-09850-5

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