Tall, with green leaves in the summer and brown leaves in the fall, they clean our air and give us shelter. Just imagine if there were no more trees. The world would go into a panic. We could not build any more houses, have paper to write on, or breathe clean air. America is considered the biggest group of people who waste the most natural resources; we are guiding our future to a treeless world. American consumers use too many trees for personal wants over personal needs. Americans consume too many trees for paper, then in return damage our environment but there are ways to prevent these damages.The first point that must be talked about is how Americans consume trees faster than they can be replaced. Trees are the primary natural resource used in making paper today. From the website “www.ecology.com,” it states that, “each person in the United States uses 749 pounds of paper every year.” The United States consumes more paper than any other country in the world. For a country that makes up about five percent of the world’s population, we consume thirty percent of all paper products in the world. They say, “Big things come in small packages,” but do you think we need to cut back a bit! Another example of how much paper an American uses, comes from the website “www.ecomall.com,” they said that the amount of paper we used was “equivalent of nine trees as big as telephone poles and four stories high!” From my own habits of using paper, I found that I use too much paper, and I am wasteful of it. Sometimes I just use one side of the paper instead of both sides of the paper and then I merrily throw it away. As mention earlier, Americans consume too many trees.
The next thing that needs to be talked about is the damage to our environment that we are causing. America does not take into account that for every action, there is a reaction. For every forest we cut down for paper purposes, we destroy hundreds of species habitats. We cause so many species to end up on the endangered species list from our over-consumption. The paper industry gets the title of being a not so clean¾ industry, for good reasons. Mills, such as pulp and paper mills, are some of the worst polluters of our environment (air, water, and land). Every year millions of pounds of toxic chemicals are released into the air and water. The website “www.ecology.com” lists the type of chemicals released each year into our environment, which are, “toluene, methanol, chlorine dioxide, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.” Plants use a process to make white and colored papers, called bleaching; which in return makes the toxic substance, dioxin (a highly fat-soluble fat). Americans need to look at their paper-consuming actions, which are damaging our environment.
Finally, there are ways to prevent these damages of over consuming and damaging of our environment. You know the saying, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” The same applies to this subject I am talking about; there are other ways to make paper. First, it starts with us, the consumer. We must go to these groceries stores, supermarkets, and paper making mills and demand more environmentally-friendly ways to make paper. For one, recycling is the most common way to save trees and it takes sixty percent less energy to produce paper from recycled stock. Agri-pulp (agricultural waste) can become a stand¾ in for wood. On the website “www.ecology.com,” it explains in more detail that agri-pulp “is wheat, oat, barley, and other crop stalks left over after harvesting.” You would find that putting together agri-pulp and recycled paper makes for some fine, fresh, and new paper. Along with these two other alternatives to trees being used to make paper: hemp and kenaf can be use to make paper too. Instead of us making this environmental problem worse, let us solve it for good.
It is certain that we do need paper in our growing economy for thousands of things, but take in the fact that we are hurting other species and ourselves in the end. Americans are still going to over-consume trees, damage our environment, and this problem will still need solving. We need to stop now with the old and wasteful ways of making our paper. Instead, we should adopt newer, better, and cleaner ways to make our paper. We must act now and not when the damage is done or we will have a whole lot to regret in the future.
Works Cited
“Paper Chase” by “Sam Martin” Ecology.com
09/26/2006< http://www.ecology.com/feature-stories/paper-chase/index.html>“Paper Facts”09/26/2006<http://www.ecomall.com/biz/paper.htm
