A useful report from the Finnish Environment Institute has prepared a life cycle analysis report investigating waste newspaper management options.

Abstract

Consumption and the amount of wastes are constantly increasing and therefore the waste management solutions have an increasing impact on the ecology and costs of the life cycle of a product. In an optimal situation the environmental impacts of a waste management solution are as few as possible and this is achieved with as low costs as possible. Searching and comparing the most appropriate waste management solutions demands systematic and case-specific studies.

The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and the University of Helsinki carried out in 2002 - 2004 a joint project called "Life cycle approach to sustainability of waste management - a case study on newspaper (LCA-WASTE)", financed by the National Technology Agency of Finland (Tekes). In the project, the ecology and costs of different waste management alternatives for newspaper were studied.

This report describes the process and results of the life cycle assessment performed in the study. Five waste management alternatives for discarded newspaper in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA) were formulated and assessed. The whole life cycle of newspaper, comprising forestry, manufacturing of newsprint, printing, waste recovery and treatment, transportations and by-products (in this study energy from waste), was included in the product system. Process-specific data from the facilities in operation, data from pilot studies and also databases were used in the life cycle inventory (LCI) phase. In order to assess the potential environmental impacts of the waste management alternatives, the inventory data were interpreted with three LCIA models, namely DAIA, Eco-indicator 99 and EPS 2000, in the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase.

Conclusions

As measured by the inventory analysis results, the material and energy recovery options (Cases 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b) were superior to landfilling (Case 1) when comparing the different waste recovery and treatment options. Although the co-combustion and incineration of newspaper produced emissions, they were compensated by the emissions avoided in other energy production facilities.

The avoided emissions have a significant impact on the net emissions of the cases. From the five cases studied, material recycling and energy recovery can be compared by comparing Case 2a to 2b and Case 3a to 3b, of which Cases 2a and 3a represent material recycling and Cases 2b and 3b represent energy recovery.

Based on the emissions to air it can be stated that the energy recovery options (Cases 2b and 3b) were more favourable than the material recovery options (Cases 2a and 3a). Material and energy recovery were actually included in all the cases, but the energy recovery ratio was higher in Cases 2b and 3b than in Cases 2a and 3a respectively, and thus the avoided emissions to air were also higher.

The differences between the cases applying gasification and incineration were minor. Hence, which energy recovery method is to be preferred depends strongly on the fuel mixture used for the compensated energy production, on the ratio of electricity and heat production in the incineration and co-combustion processes and on the assumed total energy efficiency of the modelled plants. When comparing the different life cycle phases of newspaper, it is evident that the paper mill phase is the phase producing the most emissions and consuming the most resources mostly due to its high energy consumption. Especially, most of the emissions to air were caused by the energy production.

The more virgin materials were used, the more electricity was needed for the TMP process, thus the higher the total energy consumption. On the other hand, however, the TMP process generates heat recovery steam, which decreases steam needed from<