Credits for recycling is a major issue that has arisen in all of these analyses. Recycling can be seen as waste processing of the original product or as raw material processing for the secondary product. When recycling is carried out without intersectoral flows, there is no difference in the two viewpoints. When one product is recycled into another, however, the allocation of credits (or debits) becomes crucial. One recommendation is for a 50:50 allocation based on economic value (Assies, 1991). Recent draft papers from the European Economic Community (1993) on ecolabeling appear to completely ignore this issue.

The potential ''green" advantages of recycle credits have, however, been included in business discussions within Australian and New Zealand paper companies, but no formal analysis has been published. A preliminary CO₂-energy study gave renewable energy credits to the initial product, but this appears to be an isolated occurrence (B. La Fontaine, personal communication, 1992).

It is surprising that no analysis appears to have considered the degradation of fibers from the wood source through pulping, paper making, and recycling operations. The concept of treating mature wood as having a (renewable) energy value plus fibers with an inherent paper making value would generate interesting results as the value is tracked through the life cycle. More careful analysis would be required for the technical factors involved in recycling papers containing fibers