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Sustainability··6 min

Closing the loop: what 100% recycled content really means for plasterboard liner

Recycled fibre limits, deinking realities, and why most PBL is already a circular product.

Plasterboard liner is one of the genuine circular-economy success stories in industrial paper. Most European PBL is already 90–100% recycled fibre, sourced from old corrugated containers (OCC) and mixed paper streams. The remaining technical challenges are real but solvable.

Why PBL works so well as a recycled-fibre product

  • It is internal to the building, so brightness and print quality don't matter.
  • Tensile and bonding requirements can be met with mixed recycled streams.
  • End-of-life: gypsum boards are themselves increasingly recycled, and the paper liner re-enters the OCC stream.

The remaining frontier: sticky contaminants

Mixed recycled streams contain adhesives, hot-melt residues and plastic fragments that can cause holes and weak spots in the liner. Modern mills handle this with multi-stage screening and dispersion, but specifications must include a contaminant limit.

Communicating the story

If your board carries an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), the liner's recycled content is one of the strongest data points. Use it explicitly in commercial conversations with architects and contractors.

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