Recycled lies ruin reputation of Japanese companies

Five major Japanese paper manufacturers have owned up to false claims about the recycled content of their products.

Nippon Paper Group paved the way for confessions when it admitted in January this year that it had falsified a claim about the quantity of recovered fibre in a number of its paper products. Since owning up, disgraced president Masatomo Nakamura has now decided to leave the company.

This admission opened the floodgates and saw Oji Paper, Dajo Paper, Mitsubishi Paper Mills and Hokuetsu Paper Mills make similar statements. Oji Paper admitted to claiming that the amount of recycled paper in its copy and printing paper was 50 per cent, when in fact it was between 5 to 10 per cent.

"We had let the ratio of recycled paper fall amid rising shipments while the amount of recycled paper did not grow," Oji Paper's president, Kazuhisa Shinoda, said to media.

For some of these companies, the damage done has now posed a threat to any chance of potential business. Fuji Xerox Corp, Canon, Konica Minolta and Ricoh in Japan have already announced that they will no longer sell recycled copy and printing paper from Nippon Paper Group.