Paper consumption, worldwide

Bags and sacks represents around a half of synthetic biodegradable polymer consumption worldwide in 2005. Packaging represents 39% of total consumption with other applications such as agricultural film, paper coating and nonwovens representing 11 % of total market volumes. 

Canadian consumption of recovered paper is about 4 million t/yr, much of it imported from the United States. Paper recycling continues to grow worldwide, particularly in Europe and the Pacific Rim. Worldwide use of recycled paper is expected to increase from nearly 75 million tons in 1988 to 130 million tons in 2001 (58). 

Today, the total consumption of carbonless copying paper worldwide is estimated to be 2 million tons. The major use for carbonless copying paper is in continuous business forms processed by computer. 

Concentrated aqueous dispersions of fine, particulate kaolin and calcium carbonate are used extensively in the coating of paper. Currently more than 10 million tonnes of such dispersions are used annually in North America and Europe alone, and worldwide consumption is growing at around 3% per year. 

S. ovifrons, has been shown to contain this snbstance, and it is reported that between 1953 and 1999, at least 20 poisoning incidents occurred in Japan following consumption of this fish. These incidents involved 75 people, 6 of whom died [22]. Intoxication by palytoxin also occurs in other parts of the world, although Wachi et al. [43], in their paper pnblished in 2000, stated that there had been fewer than 12 deaths due to palytoxin poisoning worldwide. 

FIGURE 3 TTie development of the EEI in the pulp and paper industry over time for various cMuntries. Countries actual primary energy consumption is indexed to the primary energy consumption of the best plant observed worldwide. 

Pulp production is the most important process for the chemical conversion of wood. It accounts for more than one third of the total wood annually processed. Worldwide consumption of paper products already exceeds 310 million tons per year, and paper industry continues to expand its production. 

World population has more than doubled from 2.5 x 10 in 1950 to 6.2 X 10 in 2002. The per capita consumption of paper worldwide was 18 kg in 1950 and 53 kg in 2002, an increase of 294%. Thus the relative consumption of paper per capita has increased considerably faster than the world population. It is obvious that these average global values do not reflect the substantial regional differences. 

Table 2.1 Development of consumption of pulps and paper worldwide (according to Jaakko Poyry, World Paper Markets up to 2010).

Before the invention of the mechanical and chemical pulping processes in the 19th century, rags (used textiles) tvere the only raw fiber source. The development of the worldwide use of fibrous raw material since 1980 is shown in Table 2.1. In the next ten years, the world-wide consumption of pulp fibers is expected to be 46% for chemical pulp, 10% for mechanical pulp and 44% for recycled paper pulp. 

Fillers are particles added to material (plastics. Composite material. Concrete) to lower the consumption of more expensive binder material or to better some properties of the mixture material. Worldwide more than 50 million tons of fillers with a total sum of ca. 25 billion Euro for different application areas, such as paper, plastics, rubber, paints and adhesives, are consumed annually. Formerly, fillers were used predominantly to cheapen end products. Today, it has been proven that fillers are also able to enhance technical properties of the products. As a result, a number of optimized types of fillers. Nano-fillers or surface treated goods have been developed. 

The United States is the leading supplier of kaolin cl, with about 40% of world production. Second largest is the United Kingdom with about 12%. US annual production capacity of 10 million metric tons is comprised of 40% water-washed, 15% airfloated, 13% calcined, and 10% delaminated clay. The major worldwide use for kaolin is in paper. In the US 40% of kaolin consumption is for coating and filling paper. Much lower but still substantial... 

The most widespread natural polymers are polysaccharides such as cellulose and starch and chitin, but also lignin, proteins and others find several applications. Most polysaccharides are composed of five or six-membered rings, usually with two or three hydrolysis attached, respectively. Chemically, they are hemiacetals with ether linkages joining the monomeric units. Cellulose in particular is enjoying a worldwide consumption volume for paper and cardboard manufacturing comparable to the overall synthetic polymeric materials that is above 205 Mtons [18]. 

This chapter will cover the applications of emulsion polymers in the paper industry. Today this industry consumes a volume of ca. 1.8 million metric tons of latex (dry) worldwide, mostly in surface sizing and paper coating. In western Europe about 3% of the paper industry s consumption of emulsion polymers go into surface sizing and 97% into paper coating. 

---