What You Can Do To Save Trees & Go Digital

One ream of paper equals five pounds. The average world office employee uses around 7 reams of copy paper each year. This fact has set the world’s average paper consumption at 123 pounds of paper per person each year.

This average is causing one billion trees to be cut down each year to satisfy the world’s paper demand. Global Warming Initiatives is only expecting this number to grow in future years causing more harm to the environment.

Besides the aesthetically pleasing benefit of trees, they impact the Earth in some major ways:

- Trees remove 100 to 120 billion tons of carbon each year from man-made sources like (cars, trains, planes, etc)
- Trees moderate climate, improve air quality, conserve water and also harbor wildlife
- Trees cut down energy costs- air conditioning and heating costs are lower in shaded areas. The less energy used by consumers the less CO2 emissions in the atmosphere

When people think of a paperless office, they usually focus on how to store documents in a digital form. This is important, but it misses the real point of going paperless. The real benefit comes from creating  documents in way that they are digital for the entire lifetime. Once a document gets printed out, you’ve broken the paperless life cycle.

A business can save massive amounts of paper through electronic documentation. Energy savings are just as important and can be found by minimizing the use of print and copy machines.  Supporting the green movement helps the environment and shows clients that your business cares about affecting it in a positive way. 

Everyone can do something... just be mindful every time you use paper products.