Jon and I have gotten into the habit of not printing. I don’t look it as a scrafice and don’t miss reading printed material. We simply don’t find the need to do it. Kudos to the various businesses that have made printing unneccesary – Adobe, online statements, Blackberry (why print itineraries when I can sync to my calendar) etc etc

Realizing that I maybe print a page every month got me wondering if US paper consumption has gone down recently and the great effects of reducing paper usage.

The Good News:

• US Paper Consumption is flat or down from previous years according to this Britannica entry from 2007
• In 2007 56.1% of paper was recovered for recycling versus 38.7% in 1993 

A Bit of Shocking News:

• The average world office employee uses around 7 reams of copy paper or 3,500 pieces of paper each year. This fact has set the world’s average paper consumption at 123 pounds of paper per person each year.
• Between 1960 and 2008 the amount of waste each person creates has almost doubled from 2.7 to 4.5 pounds per day.

Of Course There is Hope….

According to James Derosa“If all 700 million Adobe Readers users decided not to print an article ten pages long each year, there would be 3 environmental effects:

1. Less waste due to 14 million reams of copy not used
2. 80,000 trees wouldn’t be cut down annually
3. 118,000 less tons of CO2 in atmosphere

(And no need to understand the language of printer jams:)