Environmental Impacts of Waste Paper Recycling

Yrjo Virtanen, Sten Nilsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138422964
• eBook ISBN: 9781134162499
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Public concern for the conservation of natural resources and a general awareness of the environmental consequences of waste disposal is reflected in current legislation aimed at reducing waste. Recycling is commonly cited as one of the preferred methods of waste reduction and this book summarizes a recent study of paper recycling in Europe, which investigated the entire production and disposal process using a life-cycle methodology. The results of the study underline the economic and environmental advantages of paper recycling, but more controversially, they also show how, under certain conditions, the renewable character and the high energy content of paper seem to make energy recovery more attractive than recycling.

Chapter 1

Background, Objectives, and Methodology

 

There is a growing awareness of the need to radically decrease waste streams from production and consumption processes. This awareness has not only brought about the implementation of improvements in processes but has also led to increased circulation of materials. Unfortunately, industry has not always been able to make use of all reusable materials available; on the other hand, collection of the materials for reuse has not been as efficient as was estimated or expected. This has led to increasing frustration among both consumers and industry toward policy makers. To a large extent, this dilemma has arisen from the incompatibility between the goals of policy makers and the actual possibilities of rapid changes in production processes and consumer behavior. This incompatibility could only be avoided by setting more realistic goals for the reduction of waste streams, thereby reducing the excess costs resulting from inefficient policies.

The sheer volume of waste, particularly solid waste, complicated by limited waste-management resources, has led to changes in consumer behavior, to the introduction of legislation intended to reduce waste volume, and to great improvements in industrial technology. For example, during the past 20 years, despite increased production, the total wastewater discharge from paper and pulp production in some Western European countries has been halved, and the total biological oxygen demand (BOD) load reduced to one-third its former value (National Board of Waters and the Environment, Finland).

Driven by the concerns of environmentally concerned citizens, many communities and countries have introduced legislation designed to reduce waste very quickly. For example, the British target is a 50% overall recovery of recyclable household waste by the year 2000 (UK Environmental Protection Act), the German target is 80% by July 1995 (German Dual System Regulations), and the EC target is 60% by the year 1996 (Draft Directive on Packaging). In the Netherlands, industry has undertaken to reuse at least 60% of material, so that by 1995 the amount of packaging currently going to landfills will be reduced by 60% (Environmental News, 1991).

Targets for materials recovery are set, in particular, to provide substitutes for primary materials in the manufacture of goods. But recovery of materials as substitutes for fuels in energy production is currently often excluded from political recovery plans, even though the development of incineration technology and the reduction of heavy-metal, chlorine, and other contaminants in wastes might be an essential future strategic alternative.

One of the main arguments behind the popularity of planning materials recovery from the starting point of closed loop recycling is the general belief in the overall reduction of environmental load through recycling. Obviously, recycling is a means of reducing waste streams and, accordingly, reducing the demands for waste-treatment capacity. But, on the other hand, recycling may have the opposite effect of increasing demand for resources. The facilities and activities required for managing recycling, and the need to add material to compensate for quality degradation, consume energy and materials.

Paper differs from other basic material in Western Europe (and also in the rest of the world) in several fundamental ways. First, paper comes from a renewable source. Second, it possesses a high energy potential. Third, because of geo-climatic circumstances, the centers of consumption and the sources of raw material are far apart. Because of renewability, the application of the principle of sustain-ability to paper should be focused on managing the wood balances rather than overall minimization of the use of raw wood material. In addition, the energy potential of paper should be taken into account as an alternative to nonrenewable energy sources. Utilizing the heat potential of waste paper represents an essential way of both saving nonrenewable resources and minimizing solid wastes.

The objective of an efficient material production and recycling scheme should be to minimize the resource utilization and emissions of all streams of materials from cradle to grave. When searching for such an optimal scheme, it is necessary to consider many alternative arrangements for material management, because the advantage gained in one respect might easily be lost in another. One of the cornerstones of such considerations should be based on an objective and comprehensive impact inventory of the alternatives, rather than intuition.

The objectives of this feasibility study on recycling paper products in Western Europe were to demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of the life-cycle approach and methodology to the paper-recycling problem and, from this starting point, become involved in the debate on material management strategies and the concept of sustainability: to present reasons for questioning the arguments of the public debate about recycling of paper products, rather than provide evidence verifying or disproving them. The results of this study should shed light upon the following questions:

• Would the maximum use of recycled fiber in all paper qualities reduce environmental impacts?
• Could lesser impacts be achieved with a selective recycling strategy?
• What would be the effects in the case with no recycling and maximum energy recovery?
• What would be the potential impacts of different paper-recycling strategies on wood balances and on silviculture in Western Europe?

The present study approaches these questions by investigating the differences in the environmental loads and raw material demands from production and consumption, at the general level, as aggregated in two regions: Scandinavia and Central Europe. For the sake of simplicity, Scandinavia comprises Sweden and Finland and Central Europe comprises Germany, France, Italy, the Nether-lands, the UK, and Austria. The assumption is that the imbalances between supply and demand of waste paper in these regions are balanced either by exports or imports or by directing surplus supply to the waste-handling processes. The latter approach of directing part of the surplus supply (e.g., in the low-quality grades) to waste handling does not necessarily mean increased environmental burden alone, since the energy content of the fibers can be recovered by incinerating the recycled paper.

At this stage, the preliminary nature of the data used for inventories and the lack of refinement in the model of the recycling system do not allow solid quantitative analyses, evaluations, or comparisons. An essential objective of a planned full-scale study at IIASA on recycling of paper products in Western Europe is to collect new data and refine the model to such an extent that even quantitative evaluations will be relevant and justified.

The methodology used in the IIASA feasibility study on recycling paper products in Western Europe is life-cycle analysis (LCA). The principle of life-cycle analysis implies that products, activities, or even entire economic sectors are analyzed from an end-use perspective. The life-cycle approach makes it possible to quantify the cumulative impacts that a product generates from the point where materials and energies for this product are extracted from nature up to either a certain point in the product's life-cycle or, in the most complete case, the final disposal of the wastes (that is, when it is returned to nature). The processes that the emissions and wastes undergo in nature should be included, but, at present, they are disregarded in the analyses because of their complexity.

Life-cycle analysis has its roots as far back as the early 1960s. At the World Energy Conference in 1963, Harold Smith published a report on the cumulative energy requirements for the production of chemical intermediates. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several researchers undertook global modeling studies in which they attempted to predict how changes in population would affect the world's total mineral and energy resources (Meadows et al., 1972; Mesarovic and Pestel, 1974). During the period of major world oil crises in the mid- and late 1970s, the United States commissioned about a dozen major “fuel cycle” studies to estimate the costs and benefits of alternative energy systems. Later, similar studies were commissioned by both the US and British governments on a wide range of industrial systems. In 1985, the Commission of the European Communities introduced a Liquid Food Container Directive (CEC, 1985) which charged countries with monitoring the raw material and energy consumption, as well as the amounts, of the solid waste they generated. As concern about global air and water pollution problems increased, these emissions were then also routinely added to energy, raw material, and solid waste considerations.

In the traditional approach of environmental impact analyses, the industries or industrial sectors themselves are studied and their impacts are implicitly taken as representative of the products. Although in most cases the traditional approach gives a rough estimate of the product's impacts, it does not identify all sources of pollution associated with the product and, in many cases, may not even identify the largest or main sources of environmental degradation. For this reason, the traditional approach is not comprehensive enough to identify all possible strategies for reducing a product's environmental impacts.

Although life-cycle analyses identify the amounts of known pollutants from the production systems studied, they cannot, and should not, without further interpretation, be used to compare the environmental toxicity of these production systems. One can readily compare the amount of identical pollutants produced by different production systems, but one cannot deduce from life-cycle analyses whether or not one specific pollutant, or group of pollu-tants, is more harmful to the environment than another.

Another potential weakness of life-cycle studies is the tremendous amount of data required. It is extremely difficult to document clearly and understandably all data and assumptions that go into the final results of any life-cycle analysis. If different studies of the same products, however, come up with different final results, one should be able to trace these discrepancies back to the different data and assumptions made. This is only possible if all sources of data are accessible and well documented. Life-cycle analysis is an inventory method and, as a result, generates a long list of substances that are either:

• produced by the system studied as either useful products or wastes discharged into the environment; or
• consumed by the system studied in either material or energy form.

To use these results for policy decisions, this list of substances needs to be interpreted and, in general, reduced to a limited number of factors. Some researchers consider this step to be part of the life-cycle analysis itself, whereas others refer to it as the ecoprofile analysis. This reduction can be done by:

• using one or several of the individual substances as indicator(s) of the overall impacts; or
• aggregating this list into a limited number of quantities, such as total material requirements, total air emissions, total water emissions, total solid waste discharges, and total environmental costs.

Both methods involve value judgments. In the first case, representative indicators have to be selected; these almost always depend on the goals set by the person studying the respective production system. For example, if the main objective is to reduce the amounts of solid waste generated, the representative indicator(s) will be different than if the goal is to limit the release of toxic quantities into the environment. In the second case, data for different substances have to be added together into one quantity, or several, but still meaningful, quantities. This requires a value judgment on the comparability of these various substances and on their relative harm to the environment. Even environmental costs can be seen as a subjective issue, although they could also be approached, in part, from the techno-economical aspect of reduction costs. Therefore, when discussing life-cycle analysis it is very important to differentiate between an inventory and quantification of the impacts and an interpretation of results in order to answer policy questions.

Life-cycle analyses are used to quantify and compare stresses on the environment caused by alternative products or by different production systems and technologies making the same products. The method can also be used to compare the impacts of entire industries, economic sectors, and even total national economies. The information can then be used in an ecoprofile analysis to help address a number of technical and political issues in several areas, such as the following:

• Comprehensive environmental impact assessments – The life-cycle impacts generated by a certain product can be studied and compared with the impacts of other products.
• Environmental labels – LCA can furnish a quantitative basis for awarding labels for environmentally benign products (ecolabels).
• Assessment of industrial processes' efficiencies – The information can be used to calculate energy and material usage efficiencies within a given economic sector or activity and identify possible areas where improvements can be made.
• Evaluation of policy alternatives to minimize environmental impacts – One can assess the impacts of possible alternative environmental regulations through the analysis of different scenarios in order to find the best regulation.
• Comparison of environmental performance – The environmental performance in certain economic sectors of different countries can be compared.
• International negotiations on environmental policies – LCA can be used to assess and compare the systems' efficiencies for different geographic regions or countries in order to detect potentials for improvements.
• Optimization of policies for the ecorestructuring of economies – LCA provides a tool for evaluating ways of restructuring a national energy system in an environmentally sound way.

The IIASA feasibility study on recycling paper products in Western Europe, however, has been limited to demonstrating only the general justification for and possibilities of LCA methodology. The impact inventory is based on preliminary data and rather rough assumptions about the recycling system. Accomplishing a comprehensive assessment is a major task that requires resources far beyond those available for this study. Nevertheless, the inventory results from this study offer a factual basis for introducing new arguments into the debate on recycling paper products.

Chapter 2

Problems of Paper Recycling in Western Europe

To date, approximately 30% of fibers are recycled worldwide, with some countries reaching 50%. In the 1980s, the use of recycled fibers increased rapidly In 1986 the overall waste paper use (raw material input per production output) in Western Europe was only about 35%, which corresponded to about 30% furnish share in the pulp mixture. Global use at the end of the 1980s was approximately 75 million tonnes of recycled fiber per year, and it has been estimated that by the year 2000 this could increase to 130 million tonnes per year (Jaakko Pöyry, 1990).

The reasons for the low share of waste paper use in 1986 are obvious. The quality of the paper made from recycled fibers was often considered insufficient for newsprint and other printing paper uses. However, about half of the total paper and board produced in Western Europe in 1986 was for these uses. As mentioned earlier, in 1986 less than 30% of the total fibers used in newsprint were recycled fibers. In addition, recycled fibers were hardly used at all in high-quality wood-free grades. On average, waste paper raw material input was used ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Summary
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Background, Objectives, and Methodology
• 2 Problems of Paper Recycling in Western Europe
• 3 Recycling Scenarios and Impacts Studied
• 4 Paper-Recycling System
• 5 Model Treatment of the Paper-Recycling System
• 6 Scenario Results
• 7 Wood Balances
• 8 Sensitivity Considerations
• 9 Policy Implications
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• References
• Index
• The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis