Facts About Paper: How Paper Affects the Environment

What does paper cost? About a penny per sheet, give or take.

But what is the environmental cost of paper use and production? What impact has the paper consumption on the environment we live in?

Sadly, the environment pays the highest price of all for our love affair with paper.

Let’s look at some paper facts and stats below to see what the numbers say about this.

General Stats and Facts About Paper (Consumption & Production)

Paper Usage Statistics:

• Global paper use has increased by 400% in the last 40 years.
• Average person in the US uses more than 700 pounds of paper every year. That’s the highest paper usage figure per capita worldwide.
• In the last 20 years, the usage of paper products in the US reached 208 million tons (up from 92 million), which is a growth of 126%.
• Every year more than 24 billion newspapers, 350 million magazines and 2 billion books are published in the US.
• This is how per capita paper consumption (by region) looked on the World map not so long ago, in 2016:

Global Paper Consumption Statistics

Source: EPN

• America uses 30% of the global paper supply, although we account for only 5% of the world’s population.
• To meet the global demand paper production volumes currently exceed 300 million metric tons per year. Perhaps more people should switch to ebooks?
• This number is over 400 million when we look at the combined paper and cardboard data:

Global Paper and Cardboard Production Volumes 2007 - 2017 (in million metric tons)

Source: Statista

• Interestingly, global paper consumption statistics show printing is not the main paper consumption category. Packaging is:

Global paper consumption (by paper category, in tonnes)

• Production volumes when grouped by type look similar to the graph on consumption above:

Paper production volumes from 2007 to 2017 by type (Global production in 1,000 metric tons)

Source: Statista

• Likewise, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4% of all the world’s energy use.
• Today, approximately 50% of the world’s industrial logging goes into making paper.
• 422 million metric tons of paper products were produced globally in 2018.
• Every 10 minutes enough toilet paper is used globally to circle the earth.

Paper Recycling Facts And Statistics:

• We also recycle a lot. Papermakers in the US every day recycle enough paper to fill a fifteen mile long train of boxcars.
• One-third of papermaking materials come from recycled paper in the US.

Source: EPA/TAPPI

• 44.2 million tons of paper/paperboard were recycled in 2017 in the US. This means a recycling rate of 65.9%, which is the highest figure among all materials in municipal solid waste.
• 500,000 trees must be logged to produce Sunday newspapers around the world. 250 million trees could be saved if all newspapers were reprinted on recycled paper.
• Australian newspapers are made with 40% recycled content.
• 79% of the paper and cardboard used in the UK was recycled in 2017.
• Current paper recycling rate in the EU is 71.5%. Target rate for 2020 is 74%.