Question: What are the environmental issues faced by the pulp and paper industry?

What are the actions taken to overcome the issues? Provide at least 5 actions.
Pulp and paper industry is a leading industry that started to rise and attracting peoples attraction nowadays. Pulp and paper mills and manufacturing factories are mushrooming recently with more and more factories are setting up to meet worldwide demand on paper. The global pulp and paper industry is dominated by North American of United States and Canada, northern European of Finland and Sweden and East Asian countries such as Japan. It is estimated that by 2020, paper mills will produce almost 500,000,000 tons of paper and paperboard each year to meet markets demand. Both China and India are beginning to put effort in this industry and are expected to be key in the industrys growth over the next few years. However, pulp and paper industry also brings negative effects to us, especially towards the environment. There are several environmental issues related to pulp and paper industry and most of them are dreadful to our nature surrounding. First of all, pulp and paper industry catalyse deforestation. Worldwide consumption of paper has risen by 400 percent in the last 40 years with 35 percent of the harvested trees being used for paper manufacture. Logging of old growth forests accounts for less than 10% of wood pulp, but is one of the most controversial issues. . Trees raised specifically for pulp production account for 16 percent of world pulp production, old growth forests account for 9 percent, and second and third and more generation forests account for the rest. It has been estimated that it would take an average of 24 trees to produce 0.9 tonne of printing and writing paper, using the kraft process(chemical pulping). Mechanical pulping is about twice as efficient in using trees since almost all of the wood is used to make fibre therefore it takes about 12 trees to make 0.9 tonne of mechanical pulp or newsprint. Next, the second negative impact brought by the pulp and paper industry is that it reduces the biodiversity of the harvested forests. Reforestation is practiced in most areas, so trees are a renewable resource, but has been criticized for decreasing biodiversity because reforested areas are monocultures. Plantation forest, from where the majority of wood for pulping is obtained, is generally a monoculture and this raises concerns over the ecological effects of the practice. Since the effort of reforestation is only focusing on planting one type of tree for further pulping purpose, therefore it strongly affecting the biodiversity of the forest and hence affecting the balance of the ecosystem there. Furthermore, pulp and paper industry also produces massive air pollution. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are all emitted during paper manufacturing. They all cause acid rain and CO2 is a major greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Other chemicals that are released into the atmosphere during manufacturing process of pulp and paper include: carbon monoxide (CO), ammonia (NH3), nitrogen oxide (NO), mercury, nitrates, benzene, methanol and volatile compound such as chloroform. Other micro-pollutants such as dioxins and furans, organochlorines, and other volatile organic are also produced. For example, sulfur dioxide is produced and released as exhaust from the mill. On top of that, paper mills produce sulfur dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels. Sulfur dioxide is of particular concern because it is water soluble and is a major cause of acid rain. In 2006, the pulp and paper industry in Canada only released about 60,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Besides, the contribution of pulp and paper industry to global warming cannot be ignored. A recent study by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that the paper cycle results in the net addition of some 450 million carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent units per year. Moreover, pulp and paper industry also causes serious water pollution. Waste water discharges from a pulp and paper mill contains solid pollutants, nutrients and dissolved organic matter. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus can cause or exacerbate eutrophication of fresh water bodies such as lakes and rivers. Organic matter dissolved in fresh water, measured by Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), changes ecological characteristics, and in worse case scenarios leads to death of all higher living organisms. Waste water may also be polluted with organochlorine compounds. Some of these are naturally occurring in the wood, but chlorine bleaching of the pulp produces far larger

amounts. The most common organic pollutants in effluents are lost cellulose fibre, carbohydrate, starch and hemi-cellulose. The levels of these pollutants are measured by the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD). Besides, high levels of suspended solids can also cause problems of both water opacity and blanketing of river or lake beds. Severe blanketing may also result in anaerobic decomposition under the blanket releasing hydrogen sulfide into the aquatic ecosystem. Researches show that 5-8kgs of elemental chlorine per tonne of bleached chemical pulp combine with wood products to form organochlorines. About 300 types of such organochlorine compounds have been identified, and it is likely that several hundred more remain unidentified. Besides, pulp and paper industry also results in land pollution. Discarded paper is a major component of many landfill sites, accounting for about 35% by weight of municipal solid waste (before recycling). Even paper recycling can be a source of pollution due to the sludge produced during deinking. Nowadays, solid waste from paper manufacturing is usually disposed in landfill, however there are general concern about possible dioxin and heavy metal contamination. Other than that, pulp and paper industry also produces odor problems with foul-smelling compounds. The hydrogen sulfide reagent that degrades lignin structure causes some demethylation to produce methanethiol, dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide. These compounds have extremely low odor thresholds and disagreeable smells. In order to overcome all this environmental problems caused by pulp and paper industry, several actions need to be done and have to be done quickly. Among the actions that can be done is by recycling paper. There are three categories of paper that can be used as feedstock for making recycled paper: mill broke, pre-consumer waste, and post-consumer waste. Mill broke is paper trimmings and other paper scrap from the manufacture of paper, and is recycled internally in a paper mill. Pre-consumer waste is material that was discarded before it was ready for consumer use. Post-consumer waste is material discarded after consumer use such as old magazines, old telephone directories, and residential mixed paper. The United States Environmental rotection gency has found that recycling causes 35% less water pollution and 74% less air pollution than making virgin paper. . Recycling paper decreases the demand for virgin pulp and thus reduces the overall amount of air and water pollution associated with paper manufacture. Recycled pulp, or paper made from it, is known as PCF (process chlorine free) since no chlorine-containing compounds were used in the recycling process. Next, the second action that can be taken to overcome these environmental issues is by changing the bleaching process method. Initially, the pulp and paper industry use chlorine as bleaching agent in pulp bleaching. The move to non-elemental chlorine for the bleaching process reduced the emission of the carcinogenic organochlorines. . The amount of pollutants such as dioxin has been reduced by replacing some or all of the chlorine with chlorine dioxide. Elemental chlorine free (ECF) is a technique that uses chlorine dioxide for the bleaching of wood pulp. It does not use elemental chlorine gas during the bleaching process and prevents the formation of dioxin, a carcinogen. ECF pulping using chlorine dioxide is now the dominant technology worldwide (with the exception of Finland and Sweden), accounting for 75% of bleached kraft pulp globally. ECF bleaching technology uses chlorine dioxide in combination with other chemical agents such as caustic soda, oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. Besides, there is also one technology combining peracetic acid, ozone and hydrogen peroxide and oxygen used in bleaching sequences in the pulp industry to produce totally chlorine free (TCF) paper. TCF is paper that does not use any chlorine compounds for wood pulp bleaching. TCF bleaching combines oxygen delignification with peroxide brightening in a series of treatment stages. Enzymes may be used to enhance the bleaching process and a 'chelating' agent (EDTA) is added to bind the metal ions contained in the pulp and prevent them decomposing the hydrogen peroxide. A study based on EPA data demonstrated that using oxygen delignification and extended delignification to produce ECF and TCF pulps towards the environmental effects are low and similar. The next effort that we can put in to overcome environmental problem of pulp and paper industry is by using non-wood fibre sources to manufacture paper. The advantage of using non-wood fibre sources as raw material is that it avoids using woods to produce paper. This helps to decrease deforestation rate and reducing damage towards ecosystem.

Besides, this can also lead to the decrease in the emission of greenhouse gases. Today, some people and groups advocate are using field crop fibre or agricultural residues instead of wood fibre to produce paper. Examples of application of non-wood fibre sources including tea bags and filter paper. Nowadays, producing pulp from non-wood fibre sources is becoming more and more popular, especially in those developing countries such as China and India. For example, China produces nearly 90 percent of its pulp from non-wood sources. On the other hand, India produces nearly 48 percent of its pulp from non-wood sources while Thailand approximately 36 percent. Moreover, another action that can be taken is by having treatments in paper and pulp mills before waste products are being disposed. There can be three important levels of treatments. Primary treatment involves the mechanical removal of suspended solids from effluents by settlement or other means. It is a wastewater treatment employed in many mills worldwide. Secondary treatment uses micro-organisms to accelerate the natural decomposition of organic waste. The two main methods used are aerated stabilization and activated sludge treatment - both are known as aerobic treatments. The efficiency of these two systems varies widely, depending on climate, influent quality, pulp type, fibre source and mill practice. In ideal conditions, activated sludge performs better. Finally, the tertiary treatment involves coagulation of waste in the effluents assisted by aluminium oxide, ferric oxide, and polyelectrolytes, which are then sand filtered. Furthermore, another action that can be taken is by promoting the concept of paperless office. A paperless office is a work environment at which the use of paper is eliminated or wisely used. The paperless office was a publicist's slogan, meant to describe the office of the future. The basic idea was that office automation would make paper redundant for routine tasks such as record-keeping and bookkeeping. The idea came to prominence with the introduction of the personal computer. The primary way to go paperless is to make use of a system or set of systems that work entirely online and without the need to print paper. Many examples of this are already in use by businesses including financial systems that replaced general ledgers, databases replacing index cards and rolodexes, email replacing type-written letters and faxes, and the internet replacing reference books. Another way to eliminate paper is by automating paper-based processes that rely on forms, applications and surveys to capture and share data. This method is referred to as 'Enterprise Forms Automation' and is typically accomplished by using existing print-perfect documents in electronic format to allow for pre-filling of existing data, capturing data manually entered online by end-users, providing secure methods to submit form data to processing systems and digitally signing the electronic documents without printing. Lastly, another action that we can take to reduce environmental pollution brought by pulp and paper industry is by supporting and using deinked pulp (DIP) and tree-free paper. DIP is recycled paper which has been processed by chemicals, thus removing printing inks and other unwanted elements and freed the paper fibres. The process is called deinking. DIP is used as raw material in papermaking. Many newsprint, toilet paper and facial tissue grades commonly contain 100% deinked pulp and in many other grades, such as lightweight coated for offset and printing and writing papers for office and home use, DIP makes up a substantial proportion of the furnish. On the other hand, tree-free paper is claimed to be more eco-friendly considering the products entire life cycle. Sources of fibre for tree-free paper include agricultural residue such as bagasse, husks and straw. Besides, textiles and cordage wastes and wild plants such as bamboo, kenaf, hemp, jute and flax are also sources of tree-free paper. Besides, tree-free paper can also being produced by nonfibre source such as calcium carbonate bounded by high-density polyethylene resin. In conclusion, although pulp and paper industry is very important in industrial economic nowadays with many paper manufacturing and processing factories are setting up, but environmental issues need our attention also. We must emphasize both industrial benefits and also environmental balance in order to preserve the world from massive climate change. It has no point to have high technological industrial but awful environment. Therefore, scientists and authorities concerned have to put in effort to figure out the best way to obtain maximum profit out of paper and pulp industry but only brings minimum damage to the environment.

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