Going Green
- As reported by conservation.org, forty percent of all solid waste is generated from a variety of paper products.
- Office paper comprises a quarter of that waste
- Less than 20 percent of office wastepaper in the U.S. is recovered for recycling
- The majority of paper is chlorinated or bleached to a bright white, creating a pollution by-product.
MEASURABLE CLIMATE ACTION
- The climate benefits of reducing paper consumption are significant. If, for example, the USA cut its office paper use by roughly 10 percent, or 490,000 metric tons, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 1.45 million metric tons. This is the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.
OFFICE PAPER
- A recent study by Xerox showed that 45% of the paper printed in offices ends up in the bin by the end of the day. This less-than-one day lifespan is the fate of a trillion sheets of paper per year, worldwide. The cumulative cost of forms is staggering. In the USA, they are estimated to cost up to $120 billion per year, yet a third of all forms are outdated before they are used, and thus end up as waste. Such examples are not only a tragedy for the trees - the longest-lived organisms on this planet – that meet this fate, it is also quite simply a pointless waste of money.
- Environmental Paper Network (EPN), www.environmentalpaper.org (2008)
