The Comparative Study On Sustainable Water Management Of Pulp And Paper Companies

Pulp and paper companies are both great users and polluters of water resource. Nowadays, with the increasing environmental problems and the growing tensions of water crisis, the sustainable water management is of great significance and imperative to pulp and paper companies. This paper particularly analyzed the sustainable water management of pulp and paper companies from the current situation to solutions by using Sustainability Life Cycle Analysis and Template of Sustainable Product Development combined with Multi-Stakeholder Platform which is a detailed utilization of Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development on water resource management of pulp and paper companies. From the result, we found that pulp and paper companies, no matter domestic or overseas, are possible to achieve sustainable water management. They can solve the existing problems and finally tend towards future vision of sustainable development if only they use the four sustainable principles under the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development and closely cooperate with multi-stakeholders. Meanwhile, this paper compared Chinese pulp and paper companies with foreign pulp and paper companies on catchment, use, treatment, discharge of water as well as legislation and the awareness of environmental protection on the basis of the analytic results and found that there are various extent of gaps between Chinese and foreign pulp and paper companies on water catchment, use, treatment, discharge of water as well as legislation and the awareness of environmental protection. There are lots of experiences from foreign companies that worth learning and using for references for Chinese companies which means there is also a huge space and potential for Chinese companies to improve on sustainable water management. And finally, this paper gave some suggestions for Chinese pulp and paper companies on sustainable water management.