., Zhejiang Province, White Cardboard Paper Industry Life Cycle Assessment

The concept of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) originated in the later of the 1960s. The starting landmark of the LCA was the study on the coca-cola package which was carried out by American Midwest Resource Institute (MRI) in 1969. The LCA methodology has been gradually improved by practice in thirty years. In 1993, the LCA had been included in the ISO14000 series standards and became an important support tool for the environmental management and product design .LCA can be applied in the development and design of the product , and can support the governments to make environmental decision, at the same time, it can supply a significant product environmental label to conduct the consumer's manner, so the development and the application of the LCA methodology now has been widely interested by international society.In this paper, the LCA methodology is applied to Zhejiang white paperboard industry to analyze the environmental impacts throughout paper's life from raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, use/reuse/maintenance to the waste treatment . Based on the life cycle inventory analysis results, the following conclusions can be draw: pulping from waste paper and papermaking are the most important processes to water environmental impact, the major environmental impact factors are SS, COD, BOD, the important contributions to the air environmental impact are originated by the electric energy production and heat production , the major environmental impact emissions are CO2, SO2, NOx and dust; the important contributions to solid waste are the coal ash from the power boiler the rejects come from the screening and cleaning system and the sludge from papermaking waste water treatment. Impact assessment results show that the most important environmental impact related to the papermaking industry is acidification, the next one is global warming, eutrophication solid waste and dust should not be ignored .The results of the LCA show that: using clean energy, expanding the use of waste paper , reforming the production flowsheet and renewing the equipments can help the corporation to reduce energy consumption, resource consumption and the environmental emissions to decrease the cost of the paper product; and alsocan help the corporation to develop and use the resource reasonably, to use the raw materials and energy which are beneficial for environment, to improve the use efficient of the raw materials and energy, to reduce the waste of the resource and the emission of the pollutants, to reduce the pressure of the papermaking industry to the environment.LCA can be used to control all the processes throughout the paper's life from product design to product elimination to prevent and reduce the pollution, to realize sustainable development of the papermaking industry. At the same time, LCA can also make the environmental management in our country keep up with that of the international, it will be benefit to eliminate the trade wall and promote the development of the international trade.