Benefits of Recycling Paper
.The obvious benefit of recycling paper is that it causes few trees to be cut down just to make paper. However, there is a lot more resources that are involved in making paper than just trees.
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Lets look at what it takes to make one ton of paper. Newsprint and coated magazine paper takes less than shown here. These figures represent normal office copier paper. A ton of copier paper is about 40 cartons of paper.
TREES: Numerous studies suggest it takes about 24 trees to make one ton of paper. At that ratio, each time you use less than two cartons of paper (less than 20 reams), you use a tree. (1) (2)(3)
WATER: It takes 12,000 gallons of water to make that ton of paper. Using the same ratio, it takes about 600 gallons of water to make a carton of copier paper.
ENERGY: It takes 6,000 kilowatts of energy to make a ton of paper. Using the same ratio, it takes about 300 kilowatts of energy to make a ton of paper. This is about enough energy to power a household for about 10 days.
RECYCLING:
TREES: A ton of recycled paper saves 24 trees. (again less if the paper were newsprint of coated magazine stock)
WATER: Making a ton of paper from recycled paper saves 7,000 gallons of water, a savings of 58%.
ENERGY: Making a ton of paper saves about 4,000 kilowatts of energy, a savings of 64% of the amount of energy.
(1) Conservatree.com
Newsprint and coated magazine paper uses about half as many trees
