Recycled paper saves 60 percent energy compared to the production of virgin paper.

Recycling of each ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7000 gallons of water.

Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12-foot wall from New York to California.

Global paper use has grown more than six-fold since 1950.

One fifth of all wood harvested in the world ends up in paper.

It takes two to three and a half tons of trees to make one ton of paper.

Pulp and paper production is the fifth largest industrial consumer of energy in the world, using as much power to produce a ton of product as the iron and steel industry.

In some countries, including the United States, paper accounts for nearly 40 percent of all municipal solid waste.

Making paper uses more water per ton than any other product in the world.

If offices throughout the country increased the rate of two-sided photocopying from the 1991 figure of 20 percent to 60 percent, they could save the equivalent of about 15 million trees.

Every Sunday 500,000 trees could be saved if everyone recycled their newspapers.

More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrives in American mail boxes each year – that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.

In 2003, 5.4 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 420,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Only 32 percent of this ad mail was recycled.

The production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars.

One study says Americans throw away 44 percent of bulk mail unopened, yet still spend eight months per lifetime opening bulk mail.

Sources