Production pathway sustainability assessment is an important step in promoting sustainability characteristics during early process design. This work proposes distillation intensified alternatives for the recovery of nylon industry effluents. The waste stream contains n-pentanol, cyclohexanone, and cyclohexene oxide (light oil). These products in their pure state are high added-value products. The generation of intensified alternatives is based on the inclusion of thermally coupling, column section movement, and column section elimination. All the alternatives are evaluated in various metrics that guarantee the sustainability of the process; Mass Intensity, E-Factor, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Total Annual Cost, Controllability, and Inherent Safety. As a result, the intensified alternative with a thermal coupling turned out the most balanced process in light of sustainability indicators with energy requirements of 4.87 MJ/kg(product) and important improvement in sustainability indexes. (C) 2020 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.