Direct and indirect generation of waste in the Spanish paper industry
Identificadores
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/87005Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Ruiz-Peñalver, Soraya María; Rodríguez Molina, Mercedes; Camacho Ballesta, José Antonio; Ruiz PeñalverEditorial
Elsevier
Fecha
2014-01Referencia bibliográfica
Ruiz-Peñalver, S. M., Rodríguez, M., Camacho J.A. (2014). Direct and indirect generation of waste in the Spanish paper industry. Waste Management 34 (1), 3-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2013.09.014
Resumen
The paper industry has a relatively high degree of reliance on suppliers when compared to other
industries. Exploring the role of the paper industry in terms of consumption of intermediate inputs from
other industries may help to understand how the production of paper does not only generate waste by
itself but also affects the amount of waste generated by other industries. The product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful analytical tool to examine and assess environmental impacts over the entire life
cycle of a product ‘‘from cradle to grave’’ but it is costly and time intensive. In contrast, Economic Input
Output Life Cycle Assessment Models (IO-LCA) that combine LCA with Input–Output analysis (IO) are
more accurate and less expensive, as they employ publicly available data. This paper represents one of
the first Spanish studies aimed at estimating the waste generated in the production of paper by applying
IO-LCA. One of the major benefits is the derivation of the contribution of direct and indirect suppliers to
the paper industry. The results obtained show that there was no direct relationship between the impact
on output and the impact on waste generation exerted by the paper industry. The major contributors to
waste generation were the mining industry and the forestry industry