Tips to Reduce Your Paper Use

Every year, we each use about 670 pounds of paper and paper products. That’s the equivalent of about one sheet every 12 minutes! While that is a lot of paper, we have some good news. First, our use of paper has declined from about 735 pounds per person just a few years ago. Second, more than half of this paper, about 360 pounds per person per year, is now being recovered for recycling.

Here are some tips to reduce your paper use and increase your paper recycling:

• Use less paper by saving emails in electronic folders, bookmarking websites, and archiving documents on your computer hard drive and on a backup medium, such as a flash drive or CD.
• Get more use from your paper by using both sides. Whether you are printing or copying, choose the “two-sided” option.
• Reuse paper and paper products. Save and reuse boxes. Flatten, fold, and reuse wrapping paper. Print drafts of documents on reused paper that had printing on only one side. Use scrap paper and envelopes as notepaper around your home or office.
• Recycle more paper and paper products. Recycling paper reduces the demands on our forests and tree farms. In addition, making new paper products from recaptured paper uses less total energy and less water, requires less bleach, and results in fewer toxic releases of air and water pollutants. You can mix paper, including copier/printer paper, mail and envelopes, brown paper bags, magazines, catalogs, and newspaper, in your blue bag. You can also recycle flattened corrugated cardboard.
• Buy recycled-content paper and paper products. We can help improve markets for our papers by seeking out recycled content products, such as printer paper, stationery, notebooks and notebook paper, boxes, tissue products, and more.

You can learn more about paper use and recycling by visiting these websites:

• www.environmentaldefense.org/papercalculator/
• www.paperrecycles.org/recycling/index.html