Quick Facts on Paper

• Americans use approximately 31.5 million tons of printing and writing paper each year. To produce that paper, over 535 million trees and more than 12 billion gallons of oil are used.
• In the United States, more than 90 percent of the printing and writing paper comes from virgin tree fiber (fiber that comes from trees, not recycled paper).
• Nearly half the trees cut in North America are used for papermaking.
• U.S. pulp mills consume 12,430 square miles of forests around the world each year, roughly an area the size of Maryland.
• Nearly 80% of the world's original old growth forests (the world's older forests, characterized by large, old trees, including dead snags and fallen trees that provide wildlife habitat) have already been logged or severely degraded, and in the United States we have lost 95% or our old growth forests.

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