Environmental Impact of Paper
Paper product manufacturing contributes significantly to deforestation and man-made climate change, and produces greenhouse gases. Paper-making is the third largest user of fossil fuels in the developing world. Although measures such as recycling and using tree-free paper can help reduce the environmental impact of paper, most paper still ends up in landfills. Paper production also leads to air pollution, as paper manufacturing releases Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon dioxide (CO2). Nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide are major contributors to acid rain, whereas CO2 is a greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Waste water discharged from pulp and paper mills contains solids, nutrients, and dissolved organic matter that are classified as pollutants. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus can cause or exacerbate eutrophication of fresh water bodies.
Printing inks and toners are very expensive and use environment-damaging volatile organic compounds, heavy metals and non-renewable oils, although standards for the amount of heavy metals in ink have been set by some regulatory bodies. Deinking recycled paper pulp results in a waste slurry, sometimes weighing 22% of the weight of the recycled wastepaper, which may go to landfills.
Read more about this topic: Paperless Office
Famous quotes containing the words impact and/or paper:
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)
“There’s a long story, my friend. I never did like the idea of sitting on newspapers. I did it once and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level, it actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news off the seat of my pants.”
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)