After all, how many trees are needed to produce a sheet of paper?
Do you know how many trees are needed to produce a sheet of paper? To answer this question from a purely mathematical logic, one must know how many leaves one can produce from a single tree.
Consider that a standard tree in paper production, which is eucalyptus, is capable of producing 20 reams of paper. As each ream has 500 sheets, 20 reams have 10 thousand A4 sheets of 75 g / m2 of weight per trunk. If a tree is capable of giving life to 10 thousand of these leaves, this means that to produce a sheet of paper it takes 1 / 10,000 of tree.
Although this appears to be an irrelevant number, the problem goes far beyond a simple sheet of paper. This is because, currently, most of the paper produced in Brazil comes from reforestation, which helps to solve the environmental damage associated with the deforestation of forests and the consequent depletion of natural resources . Paper consumption, in fact, causes problems associated with the production and disposal process of the material.
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Paper Disposal: An Issue Still Open
Paper consumption leads to a number of disposal issues, since this material can take from two weeks to six months to decompose into the environment. Although this is not enough, this is a long enough time to do a lot of damage, mainly due to the amount of paper discarded in streams, rivers and urban areas, which contribute to the flooding and endanger the lives of animals.
In addition, paper production itself can cause a number of environmental damage. Paper recycling , although it contributes to the reduction of disposal in the environment, requires the use of more chemicals in processing, rendering polluting an activity that already has this characteristic when using raw material.
What is the best solution for using paper?
Reforestation solves part of the issue, while recycling contributes at the other end. In addition, reuse of paper may delay the need for disposal, but it is necessary to attack the third vertex of the problem - which is production. In this case, the way is to substitute paper and reduce its use day by day.
For this to happen, the habits of society must be changed. In this respect, the use of technology can be vital: with increasing use of information technology, digital technology and the internet, it is possible to greatly reduce the use of paper in human activity. The question is not how many trees are needed to produce one sheet of paper, but how many sheets of paper should we stop consuming and producing?