Recycling waste paper, paper and cardboard packaging into other products makes it possible to significantly cut the volume of timber harvesting, yet Latvia currently has few companies that recycle already-used materials on any significant scale.
These were the conclusions to emerge from a discussion on recycling waste paper and using it to create new products, along with the problems involved and state policy on the issue, held as part of the series “Circular Economy in Business: Opportunity and Competitiveness”, organised by the magazine Dienas Bizness in cooperation with the Latvian Environmental Protection Fund. Although Latvia currently has several waste-paper recyclers, the historically largest one, the Līgatne Paper Mill, has for many years now been nothing more than a tourist attraction.
An average of 78 kg a year
“Waste paper is collected together with paper and cardboard packaging, which averages 78 kg per Latvian resident a year,” says Rudīte Vesere, Deputy State Secretary for environmental policy at the Ministry of Climate and Energy, asked about the volume of waste paper collected. She notes that this figure (78 kg) has been stable, unchanged in recent years: “By comparison, that is a large volume.” The key question is what to do with this collected waste paper, paper and cardboard packaging – whether it can be recycled, reused or sent for recovery.
“It is the material with the greatest range of uses,” Vesere stresses, explaining that waste paper, paper and cardboard packaging can be recycled or recovered to make new products, used as fuel, or partly used in biogas production. “Every tonne of waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging that gets recycled saves 12–14 mature trees in the forest, which is why it matters to use these materials efficiently – to collect, sort and recycle them,” Vesere explains.
The pandemic drove up packaging use
“We assess it more by the mass collected and subsequently recycled than in monetary terms, because the sums can shift considerably from year to year for various reasons,” Vesere says, asked how to interpret Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) data showing the export value of recycled (waste and scrap) paper or cardboard at €2.27 million in 2005 and €13.72 million in 2025. She notes that the share of packaging rose sharply specifically during Covid-19, when practically every single item of goods was individually wrapped, though this did not affect waste paper such as magazines and newspapers.
“We knew little about the virus, so we did not know how or how much to package specific products, and it seemed safer to package them more thoroughly, which in fact relied more on plastic than on cardboard and paper packaging,” Vesere explains regarding the rise in packaging during Covid-19, acknowledging that packaging volumes have since fallen back.
“How much waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging we recycle in Latvia and how much we send abroad for recycling depends on several factors – the recycling capacity available in Latvia for waste paper, paper and cardboard, which is not large even though several companies are engaged in it, as well as market prices,” Vesere says, asked about the split between recycling material collected in Latvia domestically and abroad.
Recycling mostly happens abroad
“Latvia currently has a handful of companies engaged in recycling waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging, but for the most part the material collected is only prepared for processing – recycling itself takes place abroad,” says Artūrs Bukonts, executive director of the Latvian Forest Industry Federation. He notes that recycling waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging is essentially a market matter in which cost is decisive, since transport costs, processing costs and the market price of the recycled product all play their part.
“Naturally, the key issue in collecting waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging, and especially in recycling it, is the quality of the material, which comes down to sorting.” Bukonts notes that waste paper contains various contaminants from other materials, which take time and resources to remove.
“A key question for recyclers of such materials is whether alternatives exist on the market, and whether products made from fossil-based resources are not cheaper than products made from recycled materials,” Bukonts says, naming another significant factor affecting recycling, and acknowledging that products made from fossil raw materials are cheaper and more readily available, which makes it hard for recyclers of secondary materials to sell their products on ordinary market-economy terms.
“Every choice we make comes at a cost. A door, for example, can be made of plastic or solid wood, but it can also be made of what is colloquially called pressed cardboard with an infill. If you put two doors on a table today, one made in 2010 and the other made today, and cut a cross-section through each, you would find that this year’s door has 20–30% less infill than the 2010 one. Why? Because savings can be made on the infill,” Bukonts explains.
Cooperation
CSB data show that Lithuania was the largest export market for recycled (waste and scrap) paper or cardboard in January–April 2026. “Latvia is quite small, and however much waste is generated here, we will never be able to build recycling capacity for every waste stream on our own soil, which is why there is a kind of cooperation between the Baltic states,” Vesere says, asked about exporting waste paper, cardboard and paper packaging for recycling in other countries. She notes that Lithuania recycles certain materials while Latvia recycles others, such as plastic packaging.
“If a recycling plant has small capacity, the resulting product will be relatively expensive, which limits its potential sales markets, because price matters a great deal,” Vesere says, explaining why not every country can have its own recycling capacity, and stressing that recycling in Latvia would require a steady flow of raw material that the volume collected domestically alone would not cover, meaning material would also have to be brought in from neighbouring countries. In other words, there is no processing collected waste – raw material – without cooperation.
“The most economically advantageous approach is to recycle where the relevant capacity already exists, rather than building competing recycling capacity, which would then run into a shortage of raw material and struggle to survive,” Vesere says, on the most economically sound approach to recycling.
Up to 80% can be recycled
Inese Filipova, member of the Scientific Council of the Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry and head of its Cellulose Laboratory, Dr. sc. ing., stresses that, from a technological standpoint, waste paper and paper and cardboard packaging are in a good position, as they have the highest achievable recycling rate of any material, especially in Europe.
“Globally, on average a single fibre can be recycled around twice; in Europe, every fibre that enters the cycle has already been recycled four times over,” Filipova explains. She notes that, in theory, up to 80% of collected paper can be recycled, since the remaining 20% is contaminated or otherwise unsuitable for recycling.
“There are paper products that get reused, not just used once, without any recycling process at all,” says Filipova. She notes that waste paper can be used to make various new products, including moulded-fibre goods – packaging materials such as egg cartons – as well as being diverted into other products not directly related to paper or cardboard.
“That depends on the properties required of the final product,” Filipova says, asked whether recycled fibres need some proportion of virgin fibre added. She notes that there are products whose required properties cannot be achieved using recycled fibres alone, because cellulose fibres gradually lose their original properties through repeated recycling – the fibre shortens and begins to fray – so fresh fibre has to be added.
“Fibre quality is one factor affecting production and reuse, but another significant factor is that papermaking has become highly chemical, especially for higher-grade paper, which is not only glossy but also filled, while the printing industry keeps evolving and using many different inks with complex compositions. As a result, the more complex a paper’s composition and the more components it contains, the harder it is to recycle,” Filipova explains. She notes that recycling more complex paper requires more resources – water and time – which makes it more expensive.
Edges of competitiveness
“The range of investment that setting up a paper-recycling company might require depends not only on the quality of the intended raw material but also on the type of product to be made, and on whether or not ink removal is needed,” Filipova says, asked about the cost range for setting up such a recycling plant. It should be noted that establishing such a recycling plant requires an environmental impact assessment and public consultation beforehand.
“We know only too well how well such tests go in Latvia, particularly public consultations – for wind farm developments, for example,” says Bukonts. In his view, such processes can sink any idea. “Look at pulp production, which faces fairly difficult conditions in Scandinavia, where several producers have even halted operations at their mills because they cannot compete with material entering the market from South America and China, where labour costs are different (lower), environmental requirements are different, and plants may not even need an environmental impact assessment at all, yet their output competes with mills that face far higher requirements and therefore higher costs – and so higher prices,” Bukonts explains. He notes that this is precisely why Nordic producers are concentrating on hygiene products, which carry even higher added value.
“Given that situation, I don’t know how much hope can be placed in products made from recycled wood fibre,” Bukonts says, sketching the overall picture. Vesere is quick to add that this issue needs to be addressed at EU level, and that it is not confined to paper but applies, in essence, to almost every type of recycling.
“If we want to make greater use of recycled material, the requirements need to be revised so that such products can compete, because products made from fresh raw material, newly taken from nature, have a different cost and a different quality profile than those made from recycled raw material,” Vesere explains. She notes that this is precisely why a system is needed that gives preference to products made from recycled raw material.
“The European Commission has set a target that by 2030 all packaging placed on the European Union’s internal market must be reusable and recyclable, which is a complex undertaking, not least because so many different composite materials are produced, using all sorts of additives to achieve improvements or cosmetic effects, and it has to be asked whether these are really needed, since they require additional technology and additives and make recycling more expensive,” Vesere notes. She acknowledges that, until now, life-cycle analysis of a product has not really been taken into account – covering everything from the point raw materials are extracted, through production and the entire logistics chain, to the product’s use and its eventual processing: how reusable it is once its service life ends, or whether it simply ends up buried in a landfill. Vesere notes that these principles are built into the Ecodesign Regulation, which now needs to be put into practice, not least so that the relevant products remain competitive and in demand. This can be achieved through various instruments, including tax policy. Filipova acknowledges that policy can influence business decisions and appetite for risk, noting that Estonia has a pulp mill and Lithuania has paper-recycling plants.
Scientists are developing new solutions
“We recently ran a project with a packaging manufacturer to replace the synthetic additives used in making a particular product with natural ones – natural chitosan (a natural polymer obtained from food-industry by-products),” Filipova recounts. She stresses that using naturally derived additives in production can achieve exactly the same quality as synthetic additives, or even better.
“The question is one of cost, and using natural additives was, at least for now, more expensive than using synthetic ones,” says Filipova. She notes that the scientists’ development was tested under real production conditions, and its actual adoption is now up to the manufacturer.
“We are working on the potential of fibre products, and one direction is a recipe for blending recycled fibre with new fibre obtained not only from wood but also from agricultural products – hemp fibre combined with waste paper, for instance – to arrive at the best possible combinations for producing quality paper, cardboard and fibre products,” Filipova says, asked about developments currently under research. She stresses that a great deal depends on the consumer, who can demand a material – packaging – made from recycled material.
“A good example is the effort under way to make beverage bottles from recycled fibre, which would come out brown, but cellulose, the basic building block of waste paper, breaks apart in the presence of water – the fibres do not hold together, so coatings (polymers) have to be used, which complicates the packaging,” Filipova recounts. She notes that the key question is what we actually want – a genuinely sustainable product made from waste paper, or one that merely appears to be made from waste paper and gives the consumer the feeling that they are using a recycled resource and doing good for the world.
“Scientists in other countries are also working with recycled fibre, looking for solutions to these problems. Right now the key question is how to get rid of the ink left behind by the printing process. Work is under way on environmentally friendly, bio-based deinking technologies,” Filipova recounts. She stresses that fibre properties are well studied, but the printing industry creates a situation in which paper recycling is constantly chasing the growth of the printing sector, as ever-newer methods and substances keep entering use there.
“That means a method has to be found for recycling these materials. The European paper manufacturers’ association has drawn up guidelines for the printing industry on which printing inks are preferable, so that the material is easier to recycle afterwards,” Filipova explains. Goods produced in other regions of the world, where EU requirements do not apply, are entering the European market, so, according to Filipova, it is essential to know which substances a given product contains, so that they are properly declared, the product is not harmful to people, and it remains recyclable
Pictograms will arrive slowly
“In principle, extended producer responsibility applies to all packaging used in manufacturing and packaging goods, or in importing goods that are already packaged from other countries, whether EU member states or countries outside the EU,” Vesere explains. She notes that Latvia has several extended-producer-responsibility schemes, and they must be able to cope with every type of packaging entering the market and identify its composition. Packaging can already be labelled now, for instance to show the substances it contains, including recyclable raw materials, but this remains voluntary across the European Union until 2028.
“Uniform markings have been defined for use, and this is information received both by whoever uses and distributes the product, and by waste managers, who process it accordingly,” Vesere says. She notes that, for packaging, the plan by 2030 is for not just material-type labelling to appear but also pictograms – initially on waste containers, and later on the packaging of the goods themselves. Pictograms on packaging will also let shoppers in the store know whether an item is recyclable or should go in a different container. “Such pictograms are already in place in several locations in Latvia, but they must be rolled out everywhere by next March,” Vesere says.
Exports of recycled (waste and scrap) paper or cardboard (€ million)
2005.g. 2.27
2006.g. 2.32
2007.g. 2.56
2008.g. 3.27
2009.g. 2.36
2010.g. 3.41
2011.g. 4.63
2012.g. 4.86
2013.g. 6.96
2014.g. 7.65
2015.g. 9.62
2016.g. 9.52
2017.g. 10.57
2018.g. 9.07
2019.g. 9.09
2020.g. 9.85
2021.g. 19.45
2022.g. 19.38
2023.g. 10.82
2024.g. 11.79
2025.g. 13.72
2026.g.* 3.75
* January–April. Source: Central Statistical Bureau
Main export partners in 2026 (€ thousand)
Lithuania 2164.1
Poland 645.9
Finland 445.0
Thailand 294.6
Netherlands 78.8
Germany 33.4
Vietnam 32.8
Austria 32.2
India 10.8
Estonia 6.4