Why Paper-Less?
When we look at it, most often it's "just" a sheet of paper. We
print on it; we write on it; we use it all the time really without
giving it much thought.
Paper and Climate Change
Since paper is so easily available at our disposal, it is
usually very common for us to forget its enormous and severe
environmental impact.
One of the most important and possibly least understood
impact from the paper industry is climate change. Every step in the
life cycle phase of a sheet of paper contributes to global warming
right from cutting down trees to producing the pulp and paper to
its eventual disposal. The decomposition of paper in landfills
produces methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.
The paper production process in addition to creating a loss of
habitat for numerous plant and animal species, also pollutes the
air and water with toxic chemicals such as mercury and dioxin.
Paper Facts
The Daily Green, a popular bulletin on the Green
revolution has summarized the Environmental Paper
Network report on "The state of the Paper Industry".
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/7447?click=main_sr
Some of its observations are as follows:
- 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.
- Half the world's forests have already been cleared or burned,
and 80% of what's left has been seriously degraded.
- 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
- 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.
- 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.
- Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of
municipal landfill waste).
- 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).
Offices and Paper
It is also interesting to note that offices and organizations
are one of the main consumers for paper. The following figures help
elucidate this further:
- Every year, the United States uses nearly 3.7 million tons of
copy paper - more than 700 billion sheets!
- US EPA studies show paper constitutes 40% of our waste
stream
- Record keeping accounts for 90% of office activity
- 80% filed documents are never referenced back
- 45% printed are discarded same day
- Xerox study shows in the US an average office worker prints
approximately 10 - 12K sheets annually
- An Ernst & Young study revealed that it costs $2,100 a year
to maintain a filing cabinet. An average of three percent of
documents are lost or misfiled, and have to be recovered at an
alarming cost of $120 per document.
Source - www.informit.com/articles/
Thus we can see that organizations can really make a huge
contribution towards reducing global carbon emissions by being more
careful and efficient with their paper usage.
It's economical!
It's also a lot less expensive when an organization practices
responsible paper use. The actual cost of a sheet of paper is far
more than its purchase cost.
