Cut Back on Paper Usage!

Paper is a reasonably priced necessity; you can buy it at almost every store in bulk. Because paper is so readily available to all of us, it is sometimes hard to make the connection between paper consumption and trees. On average, the typical American uses 749 pounds of paper a year. That means that the United States alone produces 187 billion pounds of paper per year! That is a lot of paper! Even worse than that, in the last 40 years, the world's paper consumption has increased 400%! In total, the world consumes around 300 million tons of paper per year. That is a ridiculous amount of trees used just for paper. Although, it is true that most paper companies have privately owned tree farms that they cut down in 20-35 year cycles and so are not constantly depleting the number of trees there are in the world.

According to the EPA, paper mills are some of the worst polluters out of any factory. They release tons of toxic gasses like formaldehyde, methanol, chlorine dioxide, and hydrochloric acid during paper production. This is a terrible source of pollution just so that we can have thin sheets of bleached white paper.

Environmentalists are starting to make a difference on paper production however. In fact, almost 45% of the paper in the United States was kept out of landfills and recycled last year. This is a great thing, but there are still 55% of us throwing our paper away instead of recycling it. Recycling is a simple thing to do, and most people can get a free recycling pick up from their house so that the only difference between recycling your paper and throwing it away is which bin you put it in.

The world has come a long way from throwing all of their paper away into landfills, and I have to applaud us on that, but there is still much to be done. I see the future being all digital- no more newspapers delivered daily, books printed on paper, or barely-looked-at office memos. There are so many changes that could occur in the world that haven't yet because we are so familiar with reading printed books and newspapers. It is faster and more efficient to read books and the news online. But until the time comes for technology to be advanced enough for everyone to have free wifi and computers, we all need to do our part in saving paper! Just use scratch paper in your notebooks-fill up each page instead of only writing a sentence or two and then throwing it away. If you print something wrong, flip it over and use it for calculating math homework or writing down phone messages! Conservation is easy, so let's get to it!

In my article summary for today, I am going to talk about saving money and trees but cutting down on paper usage. The article, Hawaii Senate Says Cutting Back on Paper Has Save $1.2 Million by The Associated Press, states that, the Hawaii Senate has saved over 800 trees in the last 2 years by cutting down on the amount of useless paperwork and excess copies they make. Not only have they saved 800 trees by not using almost 8 million pages of paper, they have also saved 1.2 million dollars! To save trees, the Senate simply said, 'no more paper unless absolutely necessary.' For only $100,000 they bought all of the necessary electronics to start sending information via internet and email. Not only does this save money and trees, it also saves a lot of time and energy that was spent couriering copies and memos to all of the members of the Senate. Because of all of the money they have saved, they can put that money into good use instead of having to make budget cuts. This is great example of how excellent saving paper is.

Thank you, ecology.com for the facts in this article!

-Morgan