Forests 2022 , 13 , 1856
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house gas emissions from virgin wood pulp and waste pulp papermaking processes, and found that waste pulp papermaking produced fewer greenhouse gases. Chen et al. [23] analyzed the 2010 and 2015 life cycle CO 2 emissions of paper products in China. The scope covered in their study was relatively complete, including forest plantation, pulp and paper making, transportation, waste paper recycling and pulp making, incineration, and landfill. However, their analysis did not include non-wood pulp raw materials in the production process, and the CO 2 emissions from the pulp and papermaking process accounted for as much as 86.33% of their results. It is worthwhile to note that the process of paper making is generally divided into two types: wet paper and drying process. Currently, China is still dominated by the former, but the latter is also developing. Different processes are used to produce different types of paper. The types of paper produced in China mainly include corrugated paper, containerboard, printing paper, and newsprint. The array of paper product categories varies from country to country. In summary, scholars’ research results on CO 2 emission accounting in the papermaking industry are relatively abundant and they provide an essential reference for the study of this paper. However, studies on CO 2 emissions of paper products are basically based on the production-side perspective, mainly accounting for CO 2 emissions of the pulp and paper production process. With the development of trade globalization, the import and export trade of paper products has become more and more frequent, and it is easy to ignore the spatial transfer of CO 2 emissions in the trade by accounting only from the production side. At the same time, the existing research also needs to deepen further the determination of the system boundary of the whole life cycle of the papermaking industry. Accordingly, this paper combines the perspective of consumer responsibility to provide a more complete estimation of CO 2 emissions of Chinese paper products from 2000 to 2019, from various stages in the whole life cycle, including raw material acquisition, pulp and paper production, trade and transportation, waste paper disposal, and export. On this basis, the impact of relevant policies on CO 2 emissions in the papermaking industry is discussed at both macro and micro levels, and then specific paths are proposed to promote the industry’s “carbon peaking”.
2. Materials and Methods 2.1. System Boundary and CO 2 Emission Source Determination 2.1.1. System Boundary
CO 2 emissions from the perspective of consumer responsibility are based on the carbon footprint idea, accounting for the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from prod- ucts or services consumed by enterprises and individuals in the process of transportation, production, and consumption, which is equivalent to the production-side CO 2 emissions minus the CO 2 emissions of exported products plus the CO 2 emissions of imported prod- ucts, where the difference between the CO 2 emissions of imported and exported products is the implied CO 2 emissions of product trade [24–26]. In order to comprehensively and systematically quantify the CO 2 emissions of paper products at all stages of production and consumption, this paper adopts the whole life cycle accounting method and proposes a system boundary for CO 2 emissions accounting of paper products, as shown in Figure 1. The system boundary is the sub-interface between the system and the environment. The environment of the whole life cycle CO 2 emission system of paper products includes resources and energy input, and CO 2 output. The whole life cycle of paper products is mainly divided into four stages within the system: raw material acquisition stage, pulp and paper stage, waste paper disposal stage, and transportation stage. Considering the data acquisition problem, CO 2 generated by paper and paperboard in domestic consumption is not included in the accounting system. Under the perspective of consumer responsibility, and based on the principle of who consumes who bears, part of the CO 2 emissions from paper and paperboard exported from China (including production and transportation) are borne by the importing country, and this part should be subtracted from the accounting process. In addition, China imports mainly wood pulp and waste paper which are semi-
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