Paper Recycling Facts

The production of a ton of paper requires 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel... Every year Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper or 580 pounds per person...

  • To produce each week’s Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
  • Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
  • If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
  • The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees.
  • The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
  • Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
  • Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
  • The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
  • Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water.
  • 75% of each tree that is cut down for paper is not used in a paper product
  • Paper made from recycled paper uses 70% less energy
  • Each year, the United States used 85.5 million tons of paper, of which we recycle 22% or 19 million tons. Of the remaining paper, we could recycle up to 70% or 46 million tons.
  • 46 million recycled tons of paper save 782 million trees.
  • Every day, Americans buy about 62 million newspapers and throw out around 44 million of them. If we recycled just half our newsprint every year, we would need 3,200 fewer garage trucks to collect our trash.
  • An average American uses 465 trees to create a lifetime of paper.
  • Americans throw away the equivalent of more than 30 million trees in newsprint each year.
  • Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year. That’s enough to build a 12 foot-high wall of paper from New York to California.
  • If Americans recycled every phone book each year, an estimated 650,000 tons of paper could be saved.
  • Recycling half the world’s paper would free 20 million acres of forest land.
  • Recycling one stack of newspapers about 6 feet tall saves the life of one tree 35 feet tall. Recycling approximately 1 ton of newspaper saves 17 trees.
  • The EPA has found that making paper from recycled materials results in 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution.
  • Every ton of recycled paper saves approximately 4 barrels of oil, 4,200 kilowatt hours of energy and enough energy to heat and air-condition the average North American home for almost 6 months.
  • Recycled paper is made to the same standards as paper made from virgin pulp. Moreover, recycled paper has features which make it more desirable than virgin paper, such as being more opaque, dense, and flexible.
  • Paper plus cardboard combined make up 73% of the materials in the landfill.
  • For every 15,000 tons of old newspaper recycled annually, 30 jobs are created to collect the paper, and 40 jobs are created to process the paper.
  • Making a ton of virgin paper requires 3,688 lbs. of wood, 24,000 gallons of water, 216 lbs. of lime, 360 lbs. of salt cake and 76 lbs. of soda ash. We then have to treat and dispose of 84 lbs. of air pollutants, 36 lbs. of water pollutants and 176 lbs. of solid waste.

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