RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
Global Life Cycle Paper Flows, Recycling Metrics, and Material Efficiency Stijn Van Ewijk, 1 Julia A. Stegemann, 2 and Paul Ekins 1 1 Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR), University College London, London, United Kingdom 2 Center for Resource Efficiency & the Environment (CREE), Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Keywords: industrial ecology material efficiency material flow analysis (MFA) paper recycling pulp and paper industry Sankey diagram
Summary Despite major improvements in recycling over the last decades, the pulp and paper sector is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pressures. Further reduction of virgin material requirements and environmental impacts requires a detailed understanding of the global material flows in paper production and consumption. This study constructs a Sankey diagram of global material flows in the paper life cycle, from primary inputs to end-of-life waste treatment, based on a review of publicly available data. It then analyzes potential improvements in material flows and discusses recycling and material efficiency metrics. The article argues that the use of the collection rate as a recycling metric does not directly stimulate avoidance of virgin inputs and associated impacts. An alternative metric compares paper for recycling (recovered paper) with total fibrous inputs and indicates that the current rate is at just over half of the technical potential. Material efficiency metrics are found to be more useful if they relate to the reuse potential of wastes. The material balance developed in this research provides a solid basis for further study of global sustainable production and consumption of paper. The conclusions on recycling and efficiency should be considered for improving environmental assessment and stimulating a shift toward resource efficiency and the circular economy.
Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website
Introduction High recycling rates are often cited as evidence for the en- vironmental performance of the paper sector. The global paper system nevertheless contributes to numerous environmental problems, including climate change, water pollution, and air pollution. Allwood and colleagues (2010) show that, even un- der a highly optimistic business-as-usual scenario, carbon emis- sions from the paper sector in 2050 will far exceed the reduction target of 50%. The necessary impact reductions are unlikely to be met unless all potentials are explored. To discover these
potentials, a detailed material flow analysis (MFA) of paper production, consumption, and waste treatment is needed. This article provides such an analysis for global paper flows from virgin inputs to end-of-life waste treatment. The MFAs for paper and pulp in the existing literature are detailed at the national level (Hekkert et al. 2000; Cote et al. 2015; Hong et al. 2011; Sundin et al. 2001) or highly aggregated at the global level (Allwood et al. 2010). The aim of this study is to produce a detailed global material balance of paper flows like those published for steel (Cullen et al. 2012) and aluminum (Cullen and Allwood 2013; Liu et al. 2012). Such a material
Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflict to declare. Address correspondence to: Stijn van Ewijk, Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR), University College London, Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London, WC1H 0NN, United Kingdom. Email : stijn.ewijk.13@ucl.ac.uk © 2017 The Authors. Journal of Industrial Ecology , published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., on behalf of Yale University. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12613 Editor managing review: Stefanie Hellweg
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Journal of Industrial Ecology
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