More than 73 percent of newspapers in Ireland were recycled in 2007, up from about 28 percent in 2002, The Irish Times reported Tuesday.

About 161,000 tonnes of newsprint in the country is recycled yearly, and recycling has increased even further by about 16.5 percent in the past 12 months, according to figures audited by RPS, an international group of environmental consultants.

“The Irish newspaper industry has worked very hard over the past five years to improve the supply chain so that as much paper as possible gets recycled. We have also invested heavily to promote a culture of paper recycling among consumers, and both of these initiatives are clearly working very well,” said Maeve Donovan, chairwoman of the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) and also managing director of The Irish Times Ltd.

The success in recycling is due to publishers, retailers, wholesalers, recyclers and newspaper readers all bettering their practices, according to The Irish Times.

The NNI has implemented a new policy in which unsold copies are returned by wholesalers and retailers to be recycled, the group's environment officer, Enda Buckley, told The Irish Times. The group's goal for March was to collect 50 percent of all unsold newsprint, which has already been exceeded by another 26 percent.