In printing and writing papers oftennorecovered fibres are used.
In the third scenario we explore the effect of using 20% recovered
fibres.10 The result is a decrease in biomass energy in and bio-energy
out. Also the process energy use decreases as it is less energy intensive
to process recovered fibres than to extract virgin fibres from
wood. The end-of-life energy does not change. The overall impact
is a reduced life-cycle energy use of 4.1 GJ/t.
Finally, the effect of increasing the recycling rate is explored. The
recycling rate for printing and writing paper in The Netherlands
is about 80% (see Table 1). We model the effect of increasing the
rate to 100%. The results show that this only impacts the end-oflife
energy value of the paper. All other life-cycle stages remain
unchanged as we have not changed the fibre furnish of the paper.
Since the end-of-life energy value increases, the overall effect of
this scenario is a reduced life-cycle energy use of 4.7 GJ/t.