Skip to main content

The environmental impact of the paper industry - is paper really the solution?

Hello everyone,

First of all: Merry Christmas or Hannukah! I hope you are all enjoying your holidays and this special time of year. Today we'll be looking into the paper industry because lots of people are arguing about whether paper bags are better than plastic ones. We looked into it for you, enjoy!

Acid rain

In the production of pulp and paper, nitrogen oxides (NOX) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are produced. Both of these are contributors to acid rain, which is not quite as terrible as it sounds but still quite bad. Acid rain is rain, fog, snow or hail that is acidic.
It's formed by NOX & SO2 reacting with water and oxygen which will turn them into nitrous acid (HNO2), nitric acid (HNO3) & sulfuric acid (H2SO4), meaning that instead of rain being formed from just water, it is instead also mixed with acid. While acid rain won't harm you, it can harm aquatic ecosystems and forests. When the rain falls on water, it will mix with the water and over time acidify it. This will make it uninhabitable for animals and plants. When the rain falls on trees and plants, it will kill the trees by pulling life-depending nutrients from the soil and weakens the plants' natural defence systems.

Greenhouse gases

Pulp and paper don't only produce nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, it also produces CO2, in fact of the 69% of global greenhouse gas emissions that transport and energy industries are responsible for, it produces 1% of those emissions. When paper is left to decompose it releases methane into the atmosphere, and methane is 25 times worse for the climate than CO2 due to its chemical build! The paper industry also uses fossil fuels for production and transportation and it's responsible for a lot of deforestation, which in turn, is responsible for a quarter of all human-made global greenhouse gas emissions. This means that the paper industry is responsible for 9% of CO2 from all manufacturing industries. Which puts in in 3rd or 4th place for industrial greenhouse gas emissions!

Water

This industry uses a lot more water than others. A lot more means: 1 ton of paper requires 300-400 tons of water, which equates to about 20 litres of water for one sheet of A4. This water can't be used for anything afterwards, meaning that some countries will use 10% of their clean water for paper production. Often, dangerous chemicals are released into nearby rivers and lakes, which poison marine life and can contaminate drinking water.

Waste

Up to 26% of waste in landfill and dump sites is paper or cardboard and half of recyclables by weight in the US is paper. 44 million tons of paper and cardboard were recovered in 2012 alone and as already mentioned, paper waste produces methane. Out of all of methane emissions in the US, landfills are the largest contributor and equate to 34%.

Deforestation

93% of raw material in paper comes from trees. Half of that fibre comes from purposely harvested wood and the other half comes from sawmills, recycled paper and other similar sources. An average tree will give you 8 000 pages, which may seem like a lot, but if you consider that over 90% of office work is still done on paper that's not going to last long. In fact, 4 billion trees are cut down for paper every single year. That's one tree for two people! It's also 35% of global deforestation, which in a lot of cases is illegal. 42% of the global wood harvest is for paper. And we can't just grow another 4 billion trees a year because trees take a very long time to grow back, looking at it from this angle, the paper industry is not so very sustainable. 

Energy

The energy needed for one paper bag is enough for two plastic bags. The paper industry is the 5th largest energy consumer worldwide - 4% of the world's total energy output!

Chemicals

In paper production the following dangerous chemicals are produced/released:
- Chlorine & chlorine compounds
- Mercury
- dyes, ink, bleach
These gases cause dangerous air and water pollution.




In conclusion, paper isn't actually so great for the environment. However, with few good alternatives on the market, we're probably going to be stuck with it for a while. To help, you can do a lot to reduce your paper consumption. A few ideas could be

- Not using toilet paper but water, this may sound gross now, but is normal in other countries and definitely saves a whole lot of paper!

-Don't print everything! For school as well as work, not everything needs printing, that's what you have a laptop for.

-You can read newspapers and magazines online too

-Don't use paper towels to dry your hands in public bathrooms


Hopefully, you learned a lot, let us know what you think! 
Until the next post!

Your Green World Team💚


Sources:


Images:
Coloured paper: This image, owned by Simon P (on flickr.com) is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
Deforestation: This image is owned by Andre Moura on pexels.com.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

19.07.2020: Animal of the week: Honey Bees

Hi everyone, This week's animal is the honey bee. Enjoy! General Information An average honeybee hive is made up of one queen, hundreds of male drones and thousands of female workers. If the queen bee dies then a new queen is created. The workers select a young larva and feed it with a special food called ‘royal jelly’. The ‘royal jelly’ makes the larva grow into a fertile queen. Queens live for several years but the workers only live for five or six weeks. An average worker will make a twelfth of a tee spoon of honey during her entire life. Drones are turned out of the hive and left to die in Autumn. In the summer months, the queen bee is very busy, she can lay up to 2500 eggs in a single day. How they affect the world around them Honey bees are very important for flowers, fruit and vegetables. This comes from the fact that they are pollinators. They help the plants by transferring pollen between male and female parts, meaning the plants can g...

Announcement: Factfile

This image is owned by a blog editor.

Ozone layer

Hi everyone, What even is ozone? And the ozone layer? Where does the hole in the ozone layer come from and what does it mean? Is it dangerous? What can be done? Often the ozone-talk can be complicated and confusing, keeping an overview is hard and understanding all the problems always difficult. Let us break it down a bit for you: What is the ozone layer? We'll start with the basics: The ozone layer is part of the stratosphere, which is the second layer of the Earth's atmosphere, between 10 and 50 km above the Earth's surface and made up of protective gases. One of these protective gases is ozone. There is not much ozone in the atmosphere, only 0.3 molecule of ozone per 1 million molecules of air. This is because ozone is chemically unstable and only forms when ultra violet radiation (UV light) hits oxygen and breaks the bonds between the atoms. It fact it is so unstable that even when it has formed, it breaks down again relatively quickly. This leads to ozone turning back ...

Rachel Carson 1907-1964

Hi everybody, Today I am going to tell you about a really inspirational environmentalist. Her name is Rachel Carson. I hope her story inspires you to be more careful about pesticides. As a girl, Rachel adored writing stories about animals. She got a degree in zoology but had to go home to care for her ageing mother. She wrote a series of radio shows about fish for a living. Rachel's program, called 'Romance Under Waters', was a big hit. Her ways of writing were different to anyone else and no one had made that sound so interesting before. It proved that she was talented in not only science but also writing. She wrote two books called 'The Sea Around Us' and 'The Edge Of The Sea'. When Rachel moved to the countryside, she realized the impact of pesticides. At that time farmers sprayed chemicals on their fields a lot to protect them from animals that may want to eat them. Rachel worked out that they were killing pla...

November Top Tips | sustainable activities and hobbies

Hello everyone, So this week, we are going to be talking about sustainable free time activities. This area can quite big when it comes to environmental impact, so here are some things that you can do in your free time, that are more sustainable. 1. Reading So reading is one of our favourite things to do. However, books are made of paper and the paper industry isn't great. Some ways you can get around this is by reading online (for example, on a kindle), or through borrowing books from a library or using book boxes. If there aren't any in your area then at least try to support independent bookshops! 2. Running If you love being active then this one is for you. Running is probably one of the most sustainable forms of sport. All you need are some running shoes and somewhere to run. There is obviously more high-tech gear but that isn't really necessary if it's just a hobby. 3. Gardening If you've got a small area of land o...

02.08.2020 Animal of the week: Owl

Hi everyone, This week's blog post is all about owls. Habitat There are many different types of owl: barn owls, long-eared owls, snowy owls and lots more. Different species live in different places. Here are a few examples. Snowy owls live in the Arctic . Great grey owls live in pine forests. Elf owls live in deserts. There are about 130 different species of owl. Owls can be found everywhere in the world apart from Antarctica . Owls live in trees, holes in the ground, barns and caves. Most owls do not migrate in winter. Diet Owls eat insects, spiders, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and small mammals. What they eat the most depends on the type of owl and where it lives. Screech owls feed mostly on insects. Barn owls mainly eat mice, shrews and voles. Eagle owls eat hares and young foxes. Some owls can even fish like the Asian Fish Owl. Even though some species prefer a certain type of food, most owls will eat whatever they can find...

2021: How Our Year Went, Favourite Posts and Some Goals For 2022 | a wrap up

Hi Everyone! Today we wanted to share some thoughts on how our blogging year went in 2021 and some goals for 2022. We are now at the end of January, which is very scary, but we hope you will still enjoy this slightly belated wrap-up. In 2021, we published 36 posts in total. This is pretty good, we posted on average roughly every 10 days. However, there was a lot of time when we didn't post at all and our posts became increasingly just the monthly fact file. Many of you enjoyed the fact file, and for the most part, we enjoyed writing it but it became a bit of a chore by the end, hence the change we have made over to top tips. We think it would be nice to change our monthly post every year, and we will of course involve you in that just as we did this year. Our best posting months were by far August and September, which is understandable because we were on holiday for August and could schedule a lot of posts for September! Something we want to wor...

Heatwaves - what's so bad about them?

Hi everyone, Today we’re talking about heatwaves and what effects they have on us and the environment. Heatwaves are becoming ever more common, with 2023 breaking multiple world records. In China, 52.2°C were recorded at one point and the coastal waters near Florida, USA, were as warm as a hot tub. This is because of the combination of climate change and El Niño , both of which make the effects of the other worse. But we can’t push the blame onto El Niño. When analysed it became clear that without human made climate change the USA heat records would have been almost impossible. So what exactly are the effects of such high temperatures. A study in Europe found that the 2022 heatwave possibly caused over 70 000 heat related deaths. Although it is sometimes hard to tell whether or not someone died from the heat or from something else, after analysing the data the team found that their original estimate of 62 000 people (which is still a lot) was probably ...

Pollination

Hello everyone, Today we're talking about pollination and its importance in the world's ecosystems.  First a bit of basic plant biology. To reproduce most plants do have a differentiation into male and female, but not in the same way that we see in mammals. Both male and female reproductive organs can be found on the same plant, although not in the same place. Male gametes are produced in the stamens and are then found in pollen. On the other hand, female reproductive organs are called pistils and egg cells are found in the ovule (normally in the flower heads). Pollination describes the process of transporting the pollen to the egg cells, making it an essential part of the reproduction of plants. Nearly all seed plants worldwide require pollination to reproduce. Cone bearing trees also need pollination.  Pollination is almost always assisted by other organisms such as insects, birds and mammals to transport the pollen. In some species wind ...

Announcement: Galápagos Islands