Grey water footprint analysis of rice-straw pulp toward an adaptive strategy to climate change

Water crisis is one of the main problems due to climate change. This condition is deteriorated by pollution in receiving water body. Pulp and paper mill is known as industry that contributes to water pollution in receiving water body, because it generates large amount of waste water. Estimating pollutant in rice-straw pulp production process through grey water footprint calculation is very important to determine the adaptive strategy in order to minimize the impact that could occur due to fresh water scarcity caused by climate change. Grey water footprint is an indicator of the freshwater required to mix and dilute polutant and maintain water quality according to water quality standard. The objective of this research is to find out the grey water footprint value of rice-straw pulp production and to formulate some strategy in order to reduce the amount of pollutant. Quantitative-less dominant qualitative methods are used in this research. Data were collected through observations, direct measurement and semi-structured interviews at each step of production. The result shows that the grey water footprint value of rice straw pulp is 721.2 m"/ton, it means that in every ton pulp produced, 721.2 m3 of water is needed to assimilate the pollutant discharged to water bodies. The strategy to reduce the impact due to pollutant generated from rice straw pulp production is water efficiency at every step of production through application of cleaner production technology.