Environmental Effects of Recycling and Manufacturing Paper Using the Life Cycle Analysis.

Two traditional forms of disposing of paper products are recycling and landfilling. Recycling is believed to be good for the environment and is a major contributor to environmental quality. Despite this fact, the collection, sorting and processing for the manufacture of new products results in significant environmental impacts. The objective of this research is to determine whether landfilling or recycling is more beneficial to the environment based on environmental impacts (global warming, acidification, and eutrophication), and energy use. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to compare the environmental impact of landfilling and recycling newsprint, office paper and paperboard. Four stages (goal definition, inventory, impact assessment, and valuation) of the LCA were used. The results from this study demonstrated that recycling was the preferable choice compared to landfilling because of the decrease of energy, and the environmental impacts. The energy use was reduced by 43% when the recycling option was taken. When looking at the environmental impacts (global warming, acidification, and eutrophication) each were reduced by an average of 34%, 25%, and 25%, respectively. Using the multicriteria evaluations based on the results from the lifecycle analysis indicate that office paper as the best recyclable material from the three paper alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]