Mills allay fears after Daily Mail Christmas paper recycling claims

Today’s Daily Mail front page headlines with “Christmas Recycling Shambles” and then claims that “Families waste time sorting festive rubbish as glitter-covered cards and wrapping paper can’t be reused“.

Christmas

The article, by Victoria Allen, the paper’s science correspondent, alleges that “millions of tons of wrapping paper and Christmas cards will end up in landfill because they cannot be recycled.”  The paper carries a further two pages on recycling — with some useful advice — before asking in its editorial comment whether environmental groups are “determined that recycling should remain the most baffling and exasperating chore of modern life”.

(above) WRAP’s Recycle Now Christmas wrapping paper video

On 27 December, WRAP, via its Twitter feed, said: “Remember to recycle all that wrapping paper after Christmas.”

However, the charity has also reminded householders that some types of wrappings are made of plastic type material or contain large amounts of glitter.

And, the charity’s Recycle Now campaign has also produced a film which shows the ‘scrunch test’ for the public to work out if the wrapping ‘paper’ is plastic or paper (video above).

Paper industry

Taking a more positive stance on recycling at Christmas, one senior recovered paper mill expert told letsrecycle.com today: “This idea of millions of tons of paper and cards not being able to be recycled is not true as the paper industry generally tries to cope with the material that comes in over the next few weeks.”

He added: “Glitter and plastic wrapping ‘paper’ can be a problem and we prefer not to receive it.  We are used to this and it comes in as part of mixed papers for use in papermaking and industry is prepared. The plastic material is removed although glitter can be more of a nuisance and seems to be more popular nowadays.”

Diluted

One factor behind an ability to use some of the glittery paper and more heavily coloured wrappings is that these represent only a relatively small amount of the vast volumes of paper and cardboard generated at Christmas and so are “diluted” in the Christmas-paper stream.

WRAP estimates that 300,000 tonnes of card packaging alone is used at Christmas but does not give wrapping figures.

Another sector expert said that he would welcome work by WRAP to encourage retailers to sell paper-based wrappings and to promote these as recyclable.