It is hard to believe that the green, slimy, algae beneath the Lagoon in Venice, Italy, is a way entrepreneurs can make money by recycling it into paper.
Entrepreneurs Mark and Sarah Downey are among the growing army of entrepreneurs, in the UK, making a living out of being in the chain that recycles everything from fibre waste, citrus peel and coffee cups into fine paper that you can write a letter on.
Paper recycling – all the rage
“I would like, one day, to try that algae from the Venice Lagoon to see what quality of paper we can make from it,” says Sarah.
Paper recycling is all the rage across Europe. It is making a lot of entrepreneurs a fair amount of money.
New forests planted
There is more recycling going on than you may think. Two Sides – the non-profit advocacy group for paper recycling- says the recycling rate was 71.4 % in Europe, in 2021, and in some regions, it was 80%.
Every piece of paper that you touch has probably been recycled three times in the year that you touch it.
Every year also, according to the Forest and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, new forests are planted to feed the paper industry.
Foresters in Europe planted trees in an area bigger than Switzerland between 2005 and 2020.
Coffee drinkers toss away 2.5 billion cups a year.
The UK is not so well endowed with forests – its biggest resource is imported fibre from Europe and discarded paper coffee cups.
Every year, coffee drinkers toss away 2.5 billion cups and it is a huge business to gather them, remove the plastic, and recycle them. Costa and Starbucks will give you 25p off the next coffee if you bring your cup back.
This pile of coffee cups is where Mark and Sarah Downey glean a lot of their paper that goes through their printing presses in the quiet market town of Dorchester, in Dorset.
COVID a turning point,
Up until COVID, the family business survived on printing branded notebooks for Europe.
“In 2020, we printed and delivered 12,000 notebooks to Italy for an American financial company’s conferences. Six months later they had used only 145 notebooks, that is how the business was going! “ says Mark.
So the couple investigated the coffee cup recycling business with a subsidiary called: Coffee notes.
They looked north for supply, to the Lake District in Cumbria, and a 178-year-old paper mill by the name of James Cropper.
The mill in Kendal has patented a process called CupCycling that turns around four cups into one sheet of paper.
Trucks ship the paper south to Dorchester and the printing presses of the Downeys.
From it, the family business turns out about five tonnes of stationary products – that is more than 5,000 items a year – for retail. It also makes boxes for shops and computer companies.
“They think they are doing their bit.”
“It is an enormous game changer to get people to use up all of the resources they have and make something positive out of it,” says Sarah.
“I think what we have found is a lot of people feel good if they think they are doing their bit.”
It is not an easy business. The Downeys set up their printing press amid the recession of 1990. They learned many hard lessons, but nothing could prepare them for COVID in 2020.
No one wants to put paper in shipping containers
“The pandemic allied with the global supply chain made life very difficult. We were producing 50,000 boxes we had to make 20,000 instead, so we took a hit on our margins,” says Mark.
“In manufacturing in the UK, one of the issues is most of the materials come from Europe, a big problem with container shipping and ports shutting down. 20,000 comes down to 2000. Paper is a cheap commodity and very heavy no one wants to put it in containers. – they’d sooner put in watches,” says Mark.
When the war started in Ukraine and inflation started to ramp up it was also a problem. It makes your stuff more expensive.”
“We are ploughing a furrow that is relatively stable”
Coffenotes sells to around 60 retailers across the UK. It wants more import.
The Downeys recently sealed a deal for 3,500 notebooks for Japan.
‘That is a real accolade because they are very, very, fussy,” says Sarah.
“We are ploughing a furrow that is relatively stable and alert to what is coming through. I don’t think we are going into a recession. I think there will be an uptick. I think we have done all we can to protect against the vagaries,” says Mark.
Yet, the couple thinks the worst is far from over.
The worst is not yet over
“I was driving through Maidenhead the other day. They have got a large business park off the A412; very large office blocks. Only two were in operation and the car park was empty.”
The UK may not be in a recession yet, but it does have a long way to go to recover..
