What happens to the material loop when ‘recycled’ disappears?

On paper, the logic seems simple: a carton, box, or newspaper is collected, recycled, and reborn as a new product, continuing the cycle. Yet this ideal only holds if recycled fibres are consistently reused in new applications. Without demand for recycled content, the loop breaks, turning what should be a circular system into a linear one.

Paper fibres can be recycled more than 25 times

A persistent myth claims that paper fibres can only be recycled around seven times before they lose strength. That assumption comes from a small-scale study from the 1980s that suffered from high material losses – after seven loops, there simply weren’t enough fibres left to continue the experiment.

More recent Research by MM Board & Paper in collaboration with Technische Universität Graz challenges that outdated notion. Using advanced sheet-forming technology and minimising material losses to around 1% per cycle, researchers demonstrated that fibres can be recycled more than 25 times in laboratory conditions without significant loss of strength or structure.

This study demonstrated that there is no practical limit to fibre recycling under proper conditions. In other words, recycled fibres are a durable and renewable resource across multiple lifecycles.

Circularity depends on demand, not collection alone

Collection systems and recycling infrastructure are essential, but they do not guarantee circularity on their own. The system starts to weaken as soon as virgin fibre is specified instead of recycled grades. Once demand shifts away from recycled content, the economics of collection, sorting and recycling also come under pressure.

This has become more visible in recent years. Volatile energy and logistics costs, combined with new regulatory pressures, have pushed many companies to reassess their material specifications. Weight-based Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees can create the misleading impression that lighter virgin fibre paper and board grades are the more economical choice. In reality, recycled cartonboard is still often more cost-competitive despite those fees. Although overcapacity in virgin fibre board has narrowed the historical price gap, it has not fundamentally changed the cost logic. What it has changed is perception: distorted incentives now risk pushing buyers towards virgin fibre even where recycled grades remain both technically viable and commercially competitive.

Why using recycled content matters

The whole recycling system is about keeping fibres in use. Every product that specifies recycled board keeps material flowing and supports the entire recovery network. Each reuse spreads the environmental impact of the original resource across many product lifecycles, lowering overall resource consumption. Using recycled fibres therefore enables existing materials to contribute more and longer for sustainability.

Two main fibre streams support this loop:

• PCW (Post-Consumer Waste): material recovered from end consumers, such as used packaging and office paper
• PIW (Post-Industrial Waste): production scrap and trimmings that are returned directly to the manufacturing loop.

In Europe, recovered paper and board are classified under EN 643, the standard used across the paper sector and supported by CEPI as the official framework for paper for recycling. It defines five grade groups and sets clear limits for impurities. Together with the Recovered Paper Identification System (RPID), it helps ensure quality control, traceability, and alignment with EU End-of-Waste requirements.

Together, these fibre streams and quality standards help keep recovered fibre in circulation – but only as long as market demand remains strong. When demand falls, PCW collection becomes less viable, PIW integration loses priority, and incentives to invest in recycling infrastructure begin to erode.

Regulation is starting to reflect the full picture

Policy is increasingly acknowledging that recyclability alone is not enough. Regulations such as the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation focus not only on whether materials can be recycled, but on whether they are recycled at scale and returned to the market. In response, many global brands and retailers are setting explicit recycled-content targets across their portfolios and translating them into material specifications.

That is an important step, because the recycling loop only works when the full value chain stays connected – from collection and recycling to specification and end use.

Keeping the loop closed

Paper and cartonboard can make a major contribution to product sustainability. But that contribution remains credible only if the industry recognises both sides of the equation: recyclability and demand. Without continued demand for recycled content, the material loop becomes linear and progress towards circularity begins to unravel. In the absence of demand for PIW and PCW, fibre is used only once before being landfilled or incinerated, rather than returning to the cycle. Keeping the loop closed means ensuring that recycled fibres are not only recovered, but continuously used again and again.