Energy is only one part. The full dollar cost should be accounted for. Wood is abundant in parts of the world. For those parts it probably makes no sense to recycling but we should let the market figure it out.
Wood is abundant in Canada, Russia, and some developing countries. Other developed countries (including the US) are densely populated enough to use everything they manage to grow.
Here in Finland, paper recycling started in the 1920s, and it was first purely for economic reasons. Household paper collection started soon after WW2.
