60% of our landfill problems are due directly to the paper industry here in the USA. We are landfilling our waste paper or having it incinerated at a terrific cost to our pocket books and "our health". The landfills leak toxic wastes and the incinerator plants emit VOC’S (Volatile Organic Compounds) into the atmosphere...
There is no reason not to use recycled papers. They print as well as virgin papers, work well on laser printers, and can divert millions of pounds of printed waste away from the landfills and back into the mainstream. Recycled papers save our valuable natural resources, save energy, save our trees, create less toxic bi-products, and help our over-crowded landfills...
Using recycled papers with the highest percentage of post-consumer content helps even more. The government mandates 20% post-consumer recycled fiber to be considered recycled, but I would like to see that percentage increased, as that amount barely makes a dent into our problems. We should be looking to increase to 50% by the turn of the century.
The question of prices of the paper comes up, but what does incineration cost, what is the price of landfilling cost, and what are the medical costs to ourselves and our pocketbook? Certainly we pay for it in increased taxes and our quality of life. The paper mills can make recycled papers at lower prices as the demand for recycled papers goes up...
Using 100% post-consumer recycled papers and less bleaching agents also means less chlorine and that is the next major issue to creating a healthier atmosphere to live in. Chlorine causes Dioxin which, when mixed with other compounds, causes cancer.
What is that cost to our medical bills and to ourselves?
Tree free papers, although not considered recycled, are now considered environmentally preferable products, because they save our natural resources, use less energy in separating the lignin (the natural occurring bonding agent) from the fiber, are processed chlorine-free, and in the case of Kenaf, are pesticide-free. Tree Free plants grow in as little as 10 weeks, unlike trees that grow from 7 years to 20 years... For more on Tree Free Papers click here...
We need to address these issues more actively. Our waters are polluted, our air is contaminated, and our landfills are so clogged that we have to send our waste downstream. Let’s wake up, and do something about the problem, buy recycled paper now, before it’s too late...
Think of the hundreds of times a day we touch paper -- newspapers, cereal boxes, toilet paper, water bottle labels, parking tickets, streams of catalogs and junk mail, money, tissues, books, shopping bags, receipts, napkins, printer and copier paper at home and work, magazines, to-go food packaging. This list could fill a paperback...
Here are 15 facts about the environmental impact of the paper industry, courtesy -- as is the quote above -- of The State of the Paper Industry, a report published by the Environmental Paper Network. That is a coalition of environmental groups that aims to minimize paper consumption, maximize recycled content, source paper fiber responsibly and employ cleaner paper production practices...
1~ Forests store 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important "carbon sinks" that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming...
2 ~ Half the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what’s left has been seriously degraded...
3 ~ 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper...
4 ~ The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions...
5 ~ Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste)...
6 ~ Municipal landfills account for one third of human-related methane emissions (and methane is 23-times more potent a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide)...
7 ~ If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road...
8 ~ Compared to using virgin wood, paper made with 100% recycled content uses 44% less energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less particulate emissions, 50% less wastewater, 49% less solid waste and -- of course -- 100% less wood...
9 ~ In 2003, only 48.3% of office paper was recovered for recycling...
10 ~ Recovered paper accounts for 37% of the U.S. pulp supply...
11 ~ Printing and writing papers use the least amount of recycled content -- just 6%. Tissues use the most, at 45%, and newsprint is not far behind, at 32%...
12 ~ Demand for recycled paper will exceed supply by 1.5 million tons of recycled pulp per year within 10 years...
13.
While the paper industry invests in new recycled newsprint and paper packaging plants in the developing world, almost none of the new printing and writing paper mills use recycled content...
14 ~ China, India and the rest of Asia are the fastest growing per-capita users of paper, but they still rank far behind Eastern Europe and Latin America (about 100 pounds per person per year), Australia (about 300 pounds per person per year) and Western Europe (more than 400 pounds per person per year)...
15 ~ The Forest Stewardship Council’s certification of sustainable forestry practices is growing, with 50% of the paper product market share and 226 million acres accounted for. Advocates say the demand for recycled paper and sustainably harvested pulp from consumers, advertisers, magazine makers and other users of paper will yield the fastest reforms of the industry...
Recycling Facts
Americans throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York City...
Using recycled instead of virgin paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of The New York Time would save 75,000 trees...
100 million trees are cut down every year to make the paper for "junk mail". One-half of junk mail is thrown away unopened and unread...
Recycling half the world’s paper would free 20 million acres of forestland...
Every Sunday 500,000 trees could be saved if everyone recycled their newspapers...
You would make only 700 paper bags out of a 15-year old tree.
In a big supermarket they could be used in less than an hour!
If you stacked up all the paper an average American uses in a year, the pile would be as tall as a two-story house!
Every day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times...
Recycling a 4 foot stack of newspaper saves a 40 foot pine tree ...
The production of a ton of paper requires 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel. It’s enough energy to heat a home for 6 months...
One mature tree absorbs about 50 lb of CO2 each year...
Why Recycle Paper?
Statistics
It is possible to achieve significant reductions in the cost of buying office paper by reducing paper use and reusing paper where possible...
Eliminating office from waste may reduce waste bills by as much as 50%...
Making new paper from old paper uses 30% to 55% less energy than making paper from trees and reduces related air pollution by 95%...
Each day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the globe at least 40 times!
77% of paper waste generated in offices is recyclable...
Typical business offices generate about 1.5 pounds of waste paper per employee each day...
Nearly half of typical office paper waste is high grade office paper...
Recycling one ton of paper typically saves about 6.7 cubic yards of landfill space. A cubic yard of stacked office paper weighs about 380 pounds. Cost savings may be estimated by multiplying the tons recycled by 6.7 times the cost per cubic yard for waste disposal (if by volume) of by cost per ton (if by weight)...
Commercial and residential paper waste accounts for more than 40% of waste going to the landfill. Eliminating this paper from our waste would nearly double the lives of current landfills...
Newspaper is recycled into newspaper, game boards, egg cartons, gift boxes, animal bedding, insulation, and packaging material...
Office paper is recycled into office paper, tissue paper, paper towels, and toilet paper...
Corrugated cardboard is recycled into new cardboard and cereal boxes...
Resources Saved Per Ton of Paper Recycled
17 trees 275 pounds of sulphur 350 lbs of limestone 9,000 lbs of steam 60,000 gal of water 225 kilowatt hours 3 cubic yards of landfill space
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