Bamboo has being used as alternative raw material for construction, reinforcing fibers, paper production, among other applications. Although its recognized potentials as raw material, there are doubts about its environmental performance compared to traditional wood-based products, including paper production, which hinders bamboo-based paper plants in large scales. This study aims to assess the environmental performance of producing office paper from bamboo. Emergy synthesis (with ‘m’) and global warming potential indicators are calculated and compared with the traditional eucalyptus paper-based production. Results highlights the importance in including the renewability fractions of each input resources into emergy calculations for production systems with high human-labor intensity such as the bamboo agricultural production. Office paper produced from bamboo has similar renewability (28%), moderate environmental load (3.23 vs. 2.49), and emergy unsustainability (0.34 vs. 0.60) compared to paper produced from eucalyptus, but bamboo showed lower performance for global efficiency (568 vs. 442 sej/ton), emergy yield (1.09 vs. 1.49), and emergy investment (10.79 vs. 2.05). Focusing on global warming potential, office paper produced from bamboo releases 98 kgCO/ton compared to 56–267 kgCO/ton for eucalyptus. Notwithstanding, bamboo-based office paper demands four times more land area of agricultural production than eucalyptus, but it has a positive social aspect by requiring higher amount of direct human labor. This work shows the advantages of using eucalyptus rather than bamboo in producing office paper from an emergy and land demand perspectives, while global warming can still be considered inconclusive. Future efforts should consider a quantitative and qualitative analysis of human labor availability in both systems, as well an economic analysis to support discussions towards more sustainable office paper production from different raw materials.

中文翻译：

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竹基办公用纸生产的环保性能：与桉树的比较研究

竹子已被用作建筑、增强纤维、造纸等应用的替代原材料。尽管其作为原材料的潜力得到认可，但与传统的木质产品（包括纸张生产）相比，其环保性能仍存在疑问，这阻碍了竹基造纸厂的大规模发展。本研究旨在评估用竹子生产办公用纸的环境绩效。计算了能值综合（以“m”表示）和全球变暖潜势指标，并与传统的桉树纸生产进行了比较。结果强调了将每种投入资源的可再生性部分纳入能值计算中对于人力劳动强度高的生产系统（例如竹子农业生产）的重要性。与桉树生产的纸张相比，竹子生产的办公用纸具有相似的可再生性（28%）、适中的环境负荷（3.23 vs. 2.49）和能值不可持续性（0.34 vs. 0.60），但竹子在全球效率方面表现较低（568 vs. . 442 sej/吨）、能值产量（1.09 vs. 1.49）和能值投资（10.79 vs. 2.05）。考虑到全球变暖的潜力，竹子生产的办公用纸每吨释放 98 千克二氧化碳，而桉树生产的办公用纸每吨释放 56-267 千克二氧化碳。尽管如此，竹制办公用纸需要的农业生产土地面积是桉树的四倍，但它需要更多的直接人力，具有积极的社会影响。这项工作从能源和土地需求的角度展示了使用桉树而不是竹子生产办公用纸的优势，而全球变暖仍然被认为是不确定的。未来的工作应考虑对两个系统中的劳动力可用性进行定量和定性分析，以及经济分析，以支持关于使用不同原材料生产更可持续的办公用纸的讨论。