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long-term supply, enabling reliable quality and availability of paper products. The fossil fuel energy use information, along with the global climate change estimates, could be used to encourage pulp sup- pliers to continue to reduce their energy use and greenhouse gas emissions during production. The results showed the pulp combi- nation used at Box Elder can provide more carbon sequestration, although the pulp types used at Albany had higher carbon sequestration overall when the biomass fuels at the facility were included in the modeling scenarios. When including the potential for carbon sequestration as criteria for product design, pulp pro- duction processes could deliver the most signi fi cant reductions in the climate change indicator, along with fuel purchasing (of biomass for energy) at the Albany. For water consumption, this study helps to recognize that electricity sources, even those from renewables, can lead to impacts that dominate the life cycle; such as the hydropower-associated water losses that dominate water use for Box Elder. Hydropower is an important contributor to the power mix in that region. Operational water consumption factors for aggregate US in-stream and reservoir hydropower for a median of 4491 gallons/MWh. Other renewable electricity sources have water consumption fac- tors ranging from 0 to 1000 gallons/MWh (Macknick et al., 2012; Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2012). Continuous improvement pro- grams designed to use less water and recycle more can yield life cycle bene fi ts, provided that burden-shifting is avoided. Further this study illustrates that technology improvements at the older Albany can reduce water consumption enough to match the newer lines at Box Elder, which would result in less water impacts from product production. Water reduction or recycling strategies at the pulp and papermaking facilities would make the most meaningful improvements to this indicator. P & G has a long history of developing LCA methods and studies, and using the results to set practical and meaningful sustainability goals. Previous studies identi fi ed the importance of reducing re- sources and emissions from paper plant operations. This more detailed study has four main fi ndings with practical application to paper products and other company product families. First, although the IPSA method has more steps than the traditional facility-level allocation method, it is not dif fi cult to use and delivers more ac- curate input data for LCA. P & G will apply the IPSA method for in- puts to other product LCAs in the future. Other manufacturers and LCA practitioners may be persuaded to use IPSA as well, as the al- gorithms are published and described. Secondly, by applying a normalization step, the study identi fi es the most important impact indicators that P & G should track for this product to enable more sustainable production. The top 6 indicators will continue to be monitored and improved, but focusing on energy types and use are critical. Third, de fi ning the meaningful differences between plants, driven by established vs. new technologies and/or location, is also important. For example, Figs. 4 and 5 show the importance of un- derstanding particulate emissions at Box Elder, and determining whether the higher water consumption due to reservoir evapora- tion at hydroelectric dams is something that P & G deems of relevant or minimal concern. Fourth, by conducting a series of sensitivity analysis coupled with detailed contribution analysis, P & G can un- derstand where better data and methods will improve model ac- curacy, as well as estimate how changes in facility operations, supplier activities, or otherwise product characteristics can change life cycle impacts.
bene fi t to the global LCA community of practitioners. OpenLCA 1.4 proved to be effective for performing and managing a detailed LCA study of a product from a major manufacturer. This study is foundational to the exploration of other integrated sustainability metrics that incorporate the environmental estimates from this study, with fi nancial and social data. The conclusions of this study are clear, based on this work and other LCAs on paper towels (Montalbo et al., 2011; Madsen, 2007; Joseph et al., 2015), that making the product drives much of the relevant impacts on the environment. Energy requirements at the plants are high and draw from fuels and electricity grids that are predominantly fossil-based. However, this study also revealed that use of facility-level metrics alone to drive facility-level changes is insuf fi cient to address all signi fi cant life cycle impacts. Analyzing beyond the papermaking and converting plants, pulp supply con- tributes greatly to the life cycle impact of paper towels as well. Other life cycle stages, including disposal, are not insigni fi cant and therefore metrics that capture the full life cycle context are indeed needed to provide the proper context to inform sustainability- related decisions and identify potential changes that might be made beyond the facility. In this study, both the manufacturing facility's life cycle im- pacts are based on the same unit, 1 roll of Bounty paper towels; yet the analysis still identi fi ed differences in environmental im- pacts driven by different technological processes and locations. Box Elder is a newer plant with a state of the art platform, and incorporates design features to improve ef fi ciency. Bounty pro- duced at Box Elder has potentially a lesser impact on global warming potential ( 9%) and fossil fuel depletion ( 8%). Agri- cultural land occupation is lower for Box Elder ( 16%), which is more a re fl ection of pulp supply mix than Box Elder's processing and operations. Box Elder results in more life cycle water con- sumption ( þ 54%), due not to plant operations but electricity production in the region of the facility, and more potential health effects of particulate matter emissions ( þ 14%) than Albany, which is an older site. Within the scope of this study, fossil fuel depletion is the most relevant impact indicator, and looking at both direct and indirect means of reducing fossil fuel usage should be the highest priority for reducing overall impacts. Electricity production is identi fi edas being signi fi cant for many of the impact categories including fossil fuel depletion. Both facilities use nearly identical electricity amounts per unit output paper towel. Differences in the speci fi c energy mix in each region were signi fi cant. The electricity mix supporting Albany, utilizes a grid powered by more than 50% coal, which drove the calculated impacts (Appendix Table A1). Subse- quently, both facilities, especially Albany, would bene fi t from less dependency on coal power or through otherwise acquiring more electricity from less fossil-fuel intensive sources. Reductions in the dependency of grid electricity would reduce impacts in fossil fuel depletion, respiratory effects, and global warming potential. However, increasing the use of wood residues, which reduces the need for grid electricity, will increase agricultural land occupa- tion. The Albany plant recently announced development of an up to 50-MW biomass plant on-site. Because Albany is one of P & G's largest U.S. facilities, the project will signi fi cantly increase P & G's use of renewable energy, helping move the company closer to its 2020 goal of obtaining 30% of its total energy from renewable sources (Procter and Gamble, 2015a, 2015b). P & G will need to stay diligent in its commitment to sustainable sourcing so that expanding the land area needed to support energy needs at the facilities will not impair forest value and services. P & G's wood procurement policy (Procter and Gamble, 2014) addresses sus- tainable forest management, certi fi cations, conversions, and its ef fi cient use of resources. This is designed to ensure responsible
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