Life cycle assessment of coated white board: a case study in China

Life cycle assessment was carried out using IMPACT2002+ to estimate the environmental impact of coated white board production, which is common in China. Normalized results showed that the potential impacts of respiratory inorganics, terrestrial ecotoxicity, global warming, and non-renewable energy had a dominant contributions to overall environmental impact. Specifically, emissions from chemical and energy production processes exhibited higher potential impact (more than 80% of the total contribution) on the environment than that of emissions generated from transport, landfill, wastewater treatment, and paper plants infrastructure. Energy recovery from black liquor and energy generation based on natural gas are key factors in reducing overall environmental potential impact. The current paper presents improvements on the environmental performance of a coated white board production site in China.