The average North American uses more than 730 pounds of paper each year. That’s as much as a tree as big around as a utility pole standing 4 stories high. Though home to only about 7% of the world’s population, North America consumes nearly 30% of the world’s wood harvest. The average office employee creates nearly 2 pounds of paper waste each and every day. That’s a lot of trees to go through! Now, we all know that it is in our best interest to reduce, reuse and recycle, but few of us realize that the easiest way to do that is by changing our paper purchasing habits.
As stated above, a good bit of the world’s trees are going to make paper. Recycling paper can save 20 trees per ton of paper. “I’m no tree-hugger,” you say, “Why should I care?” Well, you should care because it’s your world, too. Even you don’t care about the trees perhaps you care about the water. paper production is a water-intensive process. A one-ton batch of recycled paper uses 7,000 gallons less to produce than a one-ton batch of virgin paper. But maybe even 7,000 gallons of water isn’t enough to get you to change your mind. How about 60% less electricity? Does that do it for you? Becaus
Some paper manufacturers, and even some recyclers, use chlorine to bleach the paper a nice, bright white. We North Americans are obsessed with bright white paper, by the way. Everything from our office paper to our toilet paper has to be whiter than snow, and unless the paper manufacturers are using oxygen or hydrogen peroxide, they are using chlorine dioxide to get that bright whiteness we crave. Paper can be acceptably bleached using oxygen and/or peroxide without adding harsh chemicals to the paper.
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