Month: July 2012

Featured image of article: Why paper is a climate-change issue

If you are worried about your individual or business carbon footprint (and you should be!) cutting your paper consumption could be a simple way to make a big reduction.

Paper is made of carbon, but the amount of actual carbon in each sheet is dwarfed by the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during its life cycle. Carbon emissions happen from the forests where paper is sourced, at pulp mills where it is made, through transportation, conversion into useful products and even after it has been thrown away.

All this ‘paper vapour’  adds up to significant levels, with estimates of up to 10kg of carbon emissions to each 1kg of paper use. Given that global paper consumption is just about to hit 400 million tonnes per year, this means paper’s contribution to climate change is substantial.

See here for some suggestions about how you can reduce your paper vapour.

Let's stop wasting paper

We are soon going to be re-starting our project to encourage big paper users to reduce their consumption. Paper saving is easy and a great way to save forests, save climate emissions and save money at the same time, so we’re delighted to be able to promise more activity on this topic. By reducing paper consumption we take pressure off forests, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and thereby protect biodiversity and the climate. Lower paper production will also result in the preservation of fresh water, reduced chemical use (the paper industry is one of the largest industrial users of chemicals), and reduced energy demand.

At the heart of our campaign is the message that organisations must change their attitudes towards paper use. Vast quantities of paper are wasted through the production of unwanted items such as catalogues, promotional material and packaging with little consideration to the environmental impacts of that paper’s production. The Shrink project works to change this and achieve a position where paper is viewed and used as a valuable resource. Our aim is to change the paper paradigm among companies and institutions to increase value and decrease volume.

We will shortly be starting discussions with supermarkets, financial companies, catalogue retailers, utilities, universities and government agencies in the UK. We’ll be looking for good examples of paper saving initiatives, and encouraging these big paper consumers to set targets to use less.