1 tree how much paper

These include the quality of paper, with a variety of thicknesses and quality, the amount of wood pulp required to make a tree increases.

Other aspects to consider is whether the paper uses recycled material within the pulp and what percentage the recycled material is.

This means that over two million trees are felled every day for global paper consumption, meaning four billion trees are cut every year to serve our paper needs. When you consider this, it makes you question whether that document is really worth printing. T: E: info ribble-pack. Search for:. Many businesses try to achieve the goal of a paperless office. Can we accurately work out how much paper comes from one tree? Paper manufacturing uses a mix of different tree types.

How much paper comes from one tree, on average? But it was the best number anyone had, so it became the number everyone used to calculate number of trees saved by recycled paper, or number of trees cut to make virgin paper, no matter what type of paper they were talking about. Paper is made from a mix of types of trees.

Some are hardwood, some are softwood. In addition, some are tall, some old, some wide, some young, some thin. Many of the "trees" used to make paper are just chips and sawdust.

So how can one talk about a "typical tree"? And do numbers calculated 30 years ago still apply to today's much more efficient paper industry? How many sheets of paper does one tree produce? The United States produced about 20,, tons of this paper last year, which by my reckoning see below takes 55 to million trees, but we only recycle about 11,, tons, or 53 percent, according to those who should know: the American Forest and Paper Association.

Recycling is vital because about a third of new paper comes from recycled paper. Another third is from waste such as sawdust and scrap from lumber mills, according to the EPA. But even this statistic might say more about the recent economic mess than anything else, because in when the economy was hot, we went through more printing paper than ever.

A rule of thumb is that a cord of hardwood cubic feet weighing two tons will produce 1, to 2, pounds of paper. So to arrive at the number of trees needed for a ton, I imagine one of those lost trees of my lost youth looming above in the Wisconsin winter, swaying in the whistling wind. Something went wrong. Please email webmaster sierraclub.