Sustainability Evaluation of Tissue Paper under Different Production Paths

The paper industry is characterized by a long industrial chain and diverse production paths. Under different production paths, the sustainability evaluation results of criteria are different, so there is a decision problem of the most sustainable production path. At present, the sustainability evaluation researches of the paper industry usually make a quantitative comparison of single or multiple evaluation criteria, respectively, and lack the integration of multiple criteria to make the overall optimal production path. This study selects the tissue paper industry as a case and takes the life cycle water consumption, energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and internal costs as evaluation criteria. Two multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models, the interval sum weighted method and technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution, are used to obtain the sustainability rankings of seven different production paths for tissue paper. The results show that the production path based on natural sulfate bamboo pulp has the highest sustainability, while the production path based on bleached kraft pulp has the lowest sustainability. The sensitivity analysis of the two MCDM models is carried out by changing the weight of the criteria. It is found that the bleaching operation has a significant impact on the sustainability ranking of production paths. The production paths based on wood pulp and bamboo pulp are superior in terms of water consumption, energy consumption, and GHG emissions, while the production paths based on straw pulp and bagasse pulp are superior in terms of internal costs. The method proposed in this study will also provide ideas for the sustainability assessment of other industrial processes.