Paper Facts: Recycling & Waste

The following facts come from Kingwoodgreeninfo.org

*Using recycled instead of virgin paper for one print run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
*100 million trees are cut down every year to make the paper for junk mail—half of which is thrown away unopened.
*Only 700 paper bags can be made out of one 15-year-old tree. A big supermarket can go through that many bags in less than an hour.
*One mature tree absorbs about 50 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.

We have a question as a species, what are our intentions? …We control the whole planet. It's a giant instrument at this point. And so the question is, what do we want to say, and what do we want to do, and what do we want to play on that instrument? ~William McDonough

90% of the logging in British Columbia occurs in ancient forests, and over 40% of the trees cut in British Columbia are used to make paper. (woodwise.org)

Switching from virgin paper to recycled-content paper results in many benefits. Research by the Alliance for Environmental Innovation has shown that each ton of recycled fiber that displaces a ton of virgin fiber used in coated groundwood paper (stock used in magazines) reduces total energy consumption by 27%, net greenhouse gas emission by 47%, particulate emissions by 28%, wastewater by 33%, solid waste by 54%, and wood use by 100%. (woodwise.org)