Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Manila, Philippines, March 7-9, 2023
Figure 5. Plot of thematic evolution over the years.
4.2 Challenges for Sustainability From the analysis of the bibliometric charts as above and on content analysis of 20 most relevant articles out of the bibliometric collection, the following sustainability challenges were identified in the paper and pulp industry: 4.2.1 Depletion of green sources Being a resource-intensive industry, paper and pulp industry leave a trail of negative impact on natural resources, primary among them being greenhouse effect (Blazejczak and Edler 2000; Pineda-Henson et al. 2002). The major raw material for a paper and pulp industry, throughout the world, is wood (Kulkarni 2013). The only sources of wood are trees. And so, cutting down trees to obtain raw material for the paper and pulp industry is an indispensable part of the paper production process for most of the paper mills (Avs and Demirer 2008). It leads to depletion of green covers which not only are the prime source of oxygen, but also are the prime consumer or absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Even during processing of wood, carbon dioxide stored in it is released into the atmosphere. In fact, pulp and paper industry contributes to almost 2% of direct industrial CO 2 emissions (IEA, 2016). So, removing trees contribute heavily to carbon emission and hence propagation of greenhouse gases. As observed by Pant (2021), paper and pulp industry must accord severe attention to protect deforestation due to heavy demand of tree-wood for paper making in countries such as India. The vitality of forest management also clearly emerges out from the thematic evolution under bibliometric analysis above, where ‘forest management’ has remained a most discussed theme for all the researcher from the beginning (1996) till date (2022). The word ‘forestry’ also finds high prominence in the word cloud, while being the fifth most referred word in all the articles under study over past 26 years. However, now organisations are taking cognizance of this vital aspect and have started contributing towards decarbonisation through initiatives such as reforestation, switching to non-wood agro- based raw materials, using recycled pulp from disposed or wasted papers as raw materials etc. Even the non- integrated paper making organizations, those purchasing raw material such as wood or pulp from outside, are emphasising on supplier selection. Having environmental certification is gradually becoming one of the prime criteria for supplier selection to ensure sustainability of the environment (Mota et al.2018; Jauhar et al. 2015; Pant et al. 2021). 4.2.2 Energy intensive sector Paper and pulp industry requires high levels of energy consumption for its paper production process (Setthasakko 2010; Mandeep et al. 2019). The industry ranks among the top five energy consuming industries of the world (Andersson and Thollander 2019). With increasing demand for paper and paperboard world over, consumption of
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