Carbon Footprint of Copying Paper: Considering Temporary Carbon Storage Based on Life Cycle Analysis

Abstract

In the era of climate change, life cycle analysis (LCA) has been acknowledged as a useful method for examining carbon footprints of products or services., Once captured and stored by trees and other plants, biogenic CO2 would re-enter the atmosphere sooner or later after the use phase of the product. And many LCA studies did not calculate the temporary carbon storage in biogenic carbon. Thus, this paper proposed a hybrid LCA approach to provide a structured methodology for evaluating carbon footprint of copying paper in consideration of temporary carbon storage. The developed method was then applied to a paper mill of China. It is indicated that the hybrid LCA method could provide a comprehensive methodology for accounting carbon footprints as well as assessing effects of delaying GHG emissions. The results shows that the carbon footprint of 1000kg copying paper was 647.89kg CO2 under scenario 1 and -5094kg CO2 under scenario 2. Concurrently, the effect of delaying the emission of the temporarily stored carbon in copying paper was 7.67%, 15.52%, or 23.58% for a certain period of time (i.e., 10, 25, or 30 years).