Sustainable Technology Developments of Interest to the Paper Industry, 1995 Environmental Conference Proceedings

J. Vanegas

CST-Georgia Tech

J. DuBose

CST-Georgia Tech

Recent global attention to the issues and challenges of sustain-able development are forcing industries to conduct self-assess-ments to identify where they stand within the framework for sustainability, and more important, to identify drivers, opportu-nities, strategies and technologies that support achieving this goal. The principal objectives of this paper are to present a brief overview of an overall framework for sustainability for the Pulp and Paper Industry, and specifically, to identify a wide spectrum of specific sustainable technology developments that need to come together in a sustainable system. These technologies encompass areas as diverse as sustainable forest management, improved capital and process effectiveness, environmental and energy performance, and recycling, among others. This sum-mary has been compiled as part of an on-going education and curriculum development effort lead by the Center for Sustain-able Technology (CST) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The most significant conclusion is that for the Pulp and Paper Industry to move towards a more sustainable future, attention and efforts must go beyond the development and use of tech-nologies for pulping and bleaching, or effluent closure. Achiev-ing true sustainability will require a paradigm shift that brings together sustainable technologies for the industry as a total system.