Biodegradable additives boost the quality of recycled paper

Even though digitalisation is increasing, the use of paper is still an important part of our everyday life. Therefore, the recycling of waste paper remains crucial for saving raw materials and making paper production more sustainable. Although more than 70% of paper is recycled in Europe, we still have a lot of work to do to close this gap.

The core process of waste paper recycling is called de-inking. De-inking is the industrial process of removing ink from the fibres of the paper. The aim of this process is to preserve as much paper fibre as possible and avoid the environment being polluted by ink.

The de-inking process works thanks to chemical additives that dissolve the ink. A new generation of these additives, such as those produced by the German oleochemicals manufacturer Peter Greven, not only significantly improve the quality of recycled paper but are 100% biodegradable, which means they do not have any adverse effect on the environment.

Associated SDG targets