Friday 23 October 2009

The cost of making paper

How expensive is paper these days? I expect, since we use so much of it, that obtaining paper pulp for recycling would be cheaper than wood pulp. As a result, I would expect paper to be not only relatively cheap, but pretty environmentally-friendly too. If we're just printing, shredding and recycling a large amount of paper over and over, then only a small amount of wood pulp is necessary to produce the volumes required. It's like it has its own cycle of life.

Cutting out paper use is good for reducing the volume of new paper required, but when a lot of paper is just being recycled, then printing everything double-sided rather than single-sided should be enough to tip us over the edge into declining paper use. then again, there will always be less paper recycled than filed away, since that's why we print most things.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And until we have so-cheap-they're-disposable tablet computers, we will continue to print.
PPS - And even then I doubt printers will go away entirely.

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