- 1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets
- 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets
- 1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly)
Tree Facts
- In the U.S. we have lost 95 percent of our old growth forests.
- Old growth forests make up 16% of the virgin tree fiber used each year to make paper products.
- 4281 acres of rainforest are lost every hour worldwide.
- It takes 3 tons of wood to produce 1 ton of copy paper.
- A single mature tree can release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.
- Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year.
- If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.
- According to the USDA Forest Service, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion, over a 50-year life span.
Printing Facts
- Average cost of a wasted page $0.06
- Average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day, that's 1,410 wasted pages per year!
- The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year.
- While 3 out of 4 office workers print from the Internet, 90% of people with a printer at home print Internet content.
- 56% of people ages 45-54 print pages from the Internet for their archives, and only 33% of people ages 18-34 do the same.
Consumption
- In 2004 the United States used 8 million tons of office paper (3.2 billion reams). That’s the equivalent of 178 million trees!
- The U.S. is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper. Per capita U.S. paper consumption is over six times greater than the world average.
- In the United States, we use enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot-high wall that’s 6,815 miles long. That’s more than the distance from New York to Tokyo!
Energy
- The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
- Production of 1 ton of copy paper uses 11,134 kWh (same amount of energy used by an avg household in 10 months).
Water
- Making one single sheet of copy paper can use over 13oz. of water– more than a typical soda can.
- Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 19,075 gallons of waste water.
Waste
- One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources.
- In 2003, paper and paperboard accounted for 35 percent of the total materials discarded in the United States.
- Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 2,278 lb of solid waste.
CO2
- CO2 prevented if all Fortune 500 companies use GP= 6,311,610 tons
- One hot-air balloon of 10m diameter contains about a ton of hot air - imagine seeing 6,311,610 hot-air balloons floating over the US - that's a lot of balloons!
- Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 5,690 lb. of greenhouse gases (the equivalent of 6 months of car exhaust).
- Dumping paper in landfill adds methane to the atmosphere as it decomposes, with 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Ink
- If you were to fill up the tank of your car with Hewlett-Packard or Lexmark ink, it would cost $100,000.
- If you filled an Olympic-size swimming pool with ink it would cost $5.9 billion!
This information was obtained from GreenPrint, who offer free solutions for conserving paper at your home and business. Please visit the site and remember to always put our planet first.
