Abstract Recovered paper is a valuable raw material for the paper industry at global level. Paper made from recovered paper reduces the demand on forests, uses less energy, water and chemicals, produces less toxic releases and reduces solid wastes that must be landfilled or incinerated. This paper is mainly aiming to analyze the driving forces for sustainable use of recovered paper and to discuss the benefits of recovered paper use on paper and board production, as well as on the environment. During last decade, global demand for recovered increased consistently due to a strong extension of the production capacities based predominantly or entirely on recovered paper, both in Europe and Fare East countries. Furthermore, an increasing competition in the utilization of used paper and board for non-papermaking purposes is observed. Obviously, these trends could constitute some barriers to the sustainable use of recovered paper in paper industry, which will be also reviewed in this paper.