The Relationship between Waste Paper and Other Inputs in the Swedish Paper Industry

A number of life-cycle assessment studies havecompared the environmental impacts of materialrecycling and incineration of waste paper. Theyhave shown that, in most cases, a recyclingscenario results in lower total energy use, butgreater use of fossil fuels. If waste paper andfossil fuels are complements, parts of theenvironmental argument for recycling isabolished. This paper estimates a cost functionfor the Swedish paper industry. If the costshares are co-integrated, an error correctionmodel will be used to model the dynamics.Short- and long-run elasticities are thencalculated to address the relationship betweenwaste paper and the other inputs: capital,labor, purchased pulp, fiber, fossil fuels andelectricity. Contrary to the life-cycleassessment studies, the results show that wastepaper and fossil fuels are substitutes, andthat waste paper and electricity arecomplements. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003