Paper Waste Remanufacturing for Pencil Production
Large amounts of waste paper are generated annually worldwide, where up to 50% of waste paper is landfilled or incinerated.
Small-to-medium business models to produce pencils by the remanufacturing of waste paper were evaluated, in which 15,000 pencils/shift/day can be produced from 135 kg of waste paper, with a maximum productivity of 64,800 pencils/day.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
The amounts of municipal solid waste and recovered paper waste, saved embodied energy, and prevented CO2 emissions were used to analyze the environmental sustainability. The number of workers and labor costs were used to evaluate human development and social sustainability.
The proposed process minimizes the amount of waste paper sent to landfill and avoids the use of new wood for producing pencils. Technical, economic, and environmental sustainability are satisfied respectively.
The final sustainability index of 0.9 is considered very high and sufficient for operating a profitable sustainable business.
A profitable sustainable business with a profit of 252–583 USD/day can be conducted, where remanufactured pencils are less expensive to produce than wooden pencils.
Read the paper — Remanufacturing of paper waste for pencil production: a sustainable business assessment by Ziyad Tariq Abdullah.
