Paper is a huge problem today. Over 48 million tons of paper reaches
our landfills each year, a comfort to the 200 million Americans that have paper recycling services and believe they are doing a good thing by keeping paper out of the landfills. In some sense it is beneficial to keep those glossy magazine treated with chemicals from seeping into ground. But most paper products would be better buried in the landfill than recycled. The trick is to bury carbon back in the ground rather than let it escape into our atmosphere. There are many drawbacks to paper recycling that we should be aware
of.

The issues are around how the recycling of paper is done today. Consider the use of chemicals, water, and the energy used in the recycling process. Recycling requires high temperatures which pull power and a slurry of chemicals that are reintroduced into our
environment in the process. It can take as much as 60% of the energy that produced the original virgin pulp to recycle the very same paper. Post consumer waste needs to be transported from homes and to recycling centers. Fuel to transport recyclable materials also be accounted for. Through recycling we are trading one problem (the disposal of paper) for several other problems (chemical waste, petroleum burn, and fresh water usage). Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere and using up our precious water supply is exacty what we want to avoid today.

There are four straight forward ways one could help reduce the amount of paper we use:

1. Use less paper - Stop printing documents. Read off your screen. Do you really EVER need to use paper plates or cups (shame on you)!

2. Reuse paper as much as possible. We can all make our own scrap paper by scribbling notes on the blank side of junk mail. If you are involved in a building process you can use your recycled paper (and garbage) to make things like insulation and fencing for your home. The applications for mixing old paper with small amount of concrete feel limitless.

Papercrete experiment
Living in Paper

3. Plant more trees. It is actually a positive thing to cut down trees before they naturally die and breakdown. All the carbon they have stored up would then be re-released into the atmosphere. This of course requires moderation.

Cooling Man - Go Carbon
Neutral for BM’07
Burners without Borders - Build ing homes with leftover BM wood
Simnuke Tree Planters - Offset Carb
on produced in large scale fire art

4. Bamboo and Hemp are the super powers of fast growing pulp. Ancient books were actually made of high quality hemp and today there are still professionals in the old art. Both Hemp and Bamboo can reach full maturity in a few years. Compare that to oak which likes to take 110 years.