Title
Potential benefits of recovered paper sorting by advanced technology
Authors
Elena Bobu Alina Iosip and Florin Ciolacu

Received July 9, 2010
Published Volume 44 Issue 10 November-December
Keywords recovered paper, recycling rate, recovered paper sorting, sensors, sustainability, life cycle

Abstract
Quality is the major prerequisite for extending the use of recovered paper (RP) as a raw material for paper and board manufacturing. Several studies related to furnish quality focus on recovered paper from household collection, which is the main source with potential for further increasing the recycling rates. The first part of the paper analyses the role of household collection for future development of paper recycling and trends of RP quality in Europe. Many studies have demonstrated that an extended household collection is always detrimental to RP quality. Without the adequate actions of all actors from the recycling chain, quality decrease could jeopardize the sustainability of paper recycling. In this context, many researches on the improvement of recovered paper quality are being carried out in Europe. A representative example for this research field is FP7 project – SORT IT (Recovered Paper SORTing with Innovative Technologies), whose objectives of RP quality improvement and expected benefits are analysed briefly in the second part of this paper.