Japan recovers 81% of its waste paper—and still has too much. Who eats the loss?
As exports thin out and newsprint/printing paper demand shrinks, only collection inertia remains. Read the supply–demand mismatch in containerboard vs. printing grades by following who pays, and when.
Recovered paper was supposed to be a “scarce resource.” Yet in Japan, even with a high recovery rate, the industry is starting to talk openly about surplus volumes and negative-value transactions—where collectors must pay to get material taken away. The key isn’t “how much,” but grade, quality, and a clogged export channel. The end-markets for containerboard (packaging) and printing paper (publishing and commercial) are shaped differently—and that difference is now showing up as a mismatch.
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BPJ WIRE: stories selected and drafted by the BPJ desk from world news, fact-checked against the source ledger — published alongside the editor's own picks.
Translated from Japanese by AI. The Japanese original is authoritative.
Bales of recovered paper (compressed bundles) aren’t piling up only behind mills. They stall at ports, sit idle in warehouses, and finally push the system toward a decision nobody wants to make: “stop collecting.” A Tokyo-based waste-management industry group notes falling recovered-paper prices, an increase in negative-value transactions, and cases of collection being halted or businesses suspending operations.…
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