The EPRC Monitoring Report 2025 confirms the resilience of Europe’s paper recycling system, with 53.9 million tonnes of paper and board collected and recycled. Collection, eco-design and innovation remain key to strengthening circularity and meeting the 2030 targets.
Paper recycling in Europe continues to demonstrate the strength of a mature system, supported by an established value chain and a balance between collection, recovered raw material availability and demand from paper mills. In 2025, the European paper recycling rate stood at 76.4%, unchanged from the previous year and already above the 76% target set for 2030 under the European Declaration on Paper Recycling 2021–2030.
These are the findings of the Monitoring Report 2025 published by the European Paper Recycling Council (EPRC), which reviews the sector’s performance and the initiatives undertaken by its members to improve recycling. The figures confirm Europe’s position among the world’s leading regions for paper recycling, while highlighting the need for continued efforts to improve collection systems, product design and process innovation.
In 2025, the total volume of paper and board collected and recycled in the paper sector decreased by 0.3% to 53.9 million tonnes. Paper and board consumption also declined, falling by 0.4% to 70.5 million tonnes. As recycling volumes and consumption decreased at broadly similar rates, the recycling rate remained stable.
The rate is calculated as the ratio between the recycling of used paper, including net trade in Paper for Recycling (PfR), and the consumption of new paper and board. It therefore takes international trade flows into account rather than measuring only the quantities collected and recycled within Europe.
A result built across the value chain
According to the EPRC, the stable recycling rate reflects decades of work by stakeholders throughout the paper value chain. Efficient collection and sorting systems, combined with steady demand from paper mills, help maintain the circular flow of materials and support the market for recovered paper.
Progress over the longer term has been substantial. Since 1998, the reference year for the first voluntary commitment under the European Declaration on Paper Recycling, recycling has increased by 34.4%, equivalent to 13.8 million tonnes. By contrast, consumption of paper and board increased until 2007 before falling back to levels similar to those recorded in the 1990s.
The report also shows that 20 European countries achieved recycling rates above 70% in 2025, compared with 17 in 2024. Three countries remained below the 60% threshold, down from five the previous year.
Another significant indicator is the number of times paper fibres are used and recycled. In Europe, each fibre completed an average of 4.2 recycling and use cycles in 2025, compared with a global average of three cycles in 2024. This highlights the contribution of European recycling systems to extending the useful life of fibre resources and keeping them in productive circulation.
Paper and board packaging leads recycling performance
Within the paper sector, packaging continues to achieve particularly strong recycling results. The EPRC press release reports an average European recycling rate of 86.6% for paper packaging, while the monitoring report cites Eurostat data showing an 87% rate for paper and cardboard packaging in the EU-27 in 2023.
According to the latter figure, paper and cardboard recorded the highest recycling rate among the main packaging materials. In absolute volumes, more paper packaging was recycled than all other packaging materials combined.
These results are particularly relevant in the context of the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which renews recycling targets and reinforces the importance of product design and end-of-life management.
For the paper industry, however, high recycling rates do not remove the need to improve the quality of recovered material streams. An item’s recyclability also depends on how it is designed, whether its different components can be separated and how well it fits the collection, sorting and recycling processes available.
Collection and eco-design at the heart of the strategy
In 2025, EPRC members continued their efforts to improve both the quantity and quality of recovered paper. Separate collection remains a decisive step: keeping materials apart helps reduce contamination and makes sorting more efficient, supporting the supply of recovered paper suitable for recycling.
In this context, the PPWR addresses the harmonisation of sorting labels on packaging and waste receptacles across the European Union.
and other EPRC members have participated in consultations on the development of a harmonised European labelling system, advocating for closer alignment between consumer-facing labels and the actual recyclability performance of packaging.
The report also highlights the importance of Design for Recycling (DfR). Taking end-of-life requirements into account during product development can help eliminate unnecessary components, improve the separability of packaging elements, optimise adhesive selection and identify barrier solutions compatible with recycling processes.
Standardisation is another important element. In 2025, Cepi revised and published the third version of its Recyclability Test Method for mills operating conventional recycling processes. The method provides a harmonised laboratory procedure for assessing the recyclability of common paper and board grades and serves as the basis for assessments under 4evergreen’s Fibre-based Packaging Recyclability Evaluation Protocol.
Cepi also organised a reproducibility programme to assess whether the method delivers consistent results across different laboratories, supporting its reliable implementation throughout the paper value chain.
At the same time, EPRC members contributed to the development of Design for Recycling criteria within CEN Technical Committee 261. Once completed, these criteria are expected to support the definition of future European recyclability requirements, ahead of the delegated acts establishing Design for Recycling criteria applicable to packaging from January 2030.
Innovation to recover more fibres and make better use of rejects
Research is also addressing ways to improve process efficiency and recover materials that are not immediately valorised. One of the initiatives highlighted in the report is the SPaRe research project, supported by INGEDE, which examines pulper rejects and opportunities to recover and utilise their individual components.
The project focuses on improving fibre recovery while investigating potential recovery routes for non-fibre fractions, including plastics. It also recognises that energy recovery may remain appropriate in certain cases.
Progress has been made in recovering fibres from rejects and developing a laboratory methodology to determine their fibre content reliably and reproducibly. Once validated, the method is expected to support the objective assessment and benchmarking of industrial processing technologies.
Another contribution comes from 4evergreen, an alliance bringing together more than 110 organisations across the fibre-based packaging value chain. Its members include paper and board producers, packaging manufacturers, brand owners, retailers, recyclers, waste management companies, suppliers of non-fibre materials, technology providers, research institutions and start-ups.
The alliance aims to achieve a 90% recycling rate for fibre-based packaging by 2030. Its tools include a Recyclability Evaluation Protocol covering different types of recycling mills and Circularity by Design guidelines to help companies develop packaging compatible with existing recycling systems.
These resources are intended to provide common criteria for assessing packaging solutions and improving their performance throughout the recycling cycle.
Consolidating progress towards 2030
Europe’s 76.4% recycling rate confirms the ability of the paper value chain to maintain high recycling performance even as consumption and recovered volumes decline. Nevertheless, reaching the voluntary target ahead of schedule does not mark the end of the journey towards greater circularity.
The EPRC report shows that priorities extend from collection and product design to testing standardisation and research into recycling processes and rejects. For paper mills, the availability and quality of recovered paper remain central concerns. For packaging manufacturers and converters, compatibility with recycling systems is becoming an increasingly important consideration at the design stage.
The EPRC’s outlook is therefore focused on preserving the balance of the market while continuing to improve the performance of the entire value chain. Cooperation between industrial stakeholders, technological innovation and shared, science-based recyclability assessment methods will be essential to consolidating current achievements and addressing the regulatory and production challenges facing Europe’s paper industry on the road to 2030.