- The U.S. consumption of paper and paperboard in 1999 was approximately 354 kilograms (about 800 pounds) per person.
- The United States and Canada are the world's largest producers of paper and paper products. The next largest are Finland, Japan, and Sweden, who produce significant amounts of wood pulp and newsprint.
- Recycling one ton of paper saves about 17 trees.
- In the last 20 years, the combined usage of today's top ten paper users has increased from 92 million tons to 208 million, which is a growth of 126%. So the use of computers is not slowing the amount paper we use.
- The Earth wastes enough paper every day to cover the netherlands every 5 minutes
- In 1997 the total world paper and paperboard production was 299,044 metric tons. It would take about 200,000 Volkswagen Beetle cars to equal this weight.
- The Chinese invent toilet paper.
- Using a normal piece of letter-sized (8.5″ x 11″, 216 mm × 279 mm) copy paper, you can fold it 8 times by folding it 4 times in one direction, then 4 times in the other as shown in mythbusters.
- 100,000 tons of recycled materials are collected each year in the city of Phoenix (from 315,000 houses). 75% of this (ie: 75,000 tons) is paper and paper products including card, junk mail, magazines, cartons and newspapers. How many trees does the city of Phoenix save each year?
- A little more than half of all U.S. paper production takes the form of converted paper products and paperboard containers and boxes (51.1 million tons in 1999).
- Sales for toilet paper world wide reached more than 3.5 billion dollars in 1995.
- Today, more than 95 percent of paper is made from wood cellulose.
12 interesting paper facts
