With a growing demand, India see its import bills on the rise Very few people consider the impact of throwing away scraps of paper or selling newspapers to the local raddiwalas. They may be throwing away a fortune. The Indian paper industry uses three types of raw materials: wood, agro-based and waste paper. Of the 650 odd mills in the country, only 24 are wood-based and 100 agro-based, while the rest use waste paper as the key raw material. In a country where the availability of wood fibre is limited and agro residues, though large, are not sufficient to sustain the growth of the paper industry, the dependency on waste paper is significantly high, especially in new mills. Currently, India imports its waste paper, mainly from the US, Gulf and Europe. The per capita consumption of waste paper in India is around 8 kg. "The per capita consumption of waste paper is 380 kg in the US," says P.G. Mukundan, secretary general, Indian Agro & Recycled Paper Mills Association (iarpma). With an estimated turnover of Rs25,000 crore, and growth pegged at 6 to 7 per cent for this year, industry experts expect the demand for waste paper to increase. "This year, there is likely to be a 10 per cent growth in imports," says a senior official at Kejriwal Papers, importers, marketers, producers and exporters of paper and paper products. The imported waste paper comes in different types, which are used to make different types of paper, for instance, old computer printouts are used to produce cultural variety paper; and a mixture of waste paper varieties are used to produce paper boards. Waste paper is a cheaper alternative to wood pulp. "Pulp is more expensive; waste paper is not only more cost-effective, but is also an environment-friendly product," says Mukundan. With consumers becoming more environment-conscious, using waste paper has its upside - one kg of paper produced from waste naner saves around 17 trees. Waste paper costs $200-400 a tonne, whereas the cost of paper pulp can range from $375 to $900 per tonne. India imports around 15 lakh tonnes of waste paper per annum. On the other hand, wood nulo imports stood at around 416,000 tonnes in 2008, as per the Indian Paper Manufacturers Association (ipma). Poor recycling One of the reasons India needs to import waste paper is that there is no proper waste paper collection policy in place. "In fact, we are able to convert only 3-4 million tonnes out of the 13-14 million tonnes of waste paper available in the country," says Pramod Agarwal, vice-president, iarpma, and cmd, Rama Paper Mills, Bijnore, which produces around 18,000 tonnes of paper products a year. "If we had a proper collection system in place, we would not have to import that much." Emami Paper Mills, which has production capacities in Orissa and Kolkata, primarily uses waste paper. "The waste paper we use is 50 per cent from India and 50 per cent imported," says P.S. Patwari, ed, Emami Paper Mills, who imported around 100,000 tonnes of waste paper in 2008. Contrary to general perception, "the collection and segregation of waste is not organised. Less than 20 per cent is collected for recycling," says Patwari. Being dependent on imported waste paper has its own set of perils - price is the main issue, apart from availability. Hence, there has to be a system in place for sorting, grading and collecting waste paper to limit the amount of paper imported. "There is no government legislation for collecting waste paper from stores, households and offices in place," says R. Narayan Moorthy, secretary general, ipma. Other countries have a more scientific method of collecting waste paper. Around 95 per cent of the mills in South India predominantly use waste paper as a raw material. Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited (tnpl), which uses bagasse (a sugarcane residue) as the primary raw material, also uses a certain amount of waste paper. "We use 5-10 per cent of waste paper," says P. Radhakrishnan, deputy general manager, tnpl. The company has a production capacity of around 2.4 lakh tonnes per annum. Even large mills like The West Coast Paper Mills have a certain percentage of waste paper in some of their products, like coated duplex boards. Moreover, the production capacity of mills is increasing and there are 30-40 mills in the pipeline in South India. However, there has been a decrease in the price of imported waste paper recently. While it cost $280-300 to import one tonne six months ago, as of two months ago the price was between $145-155.