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104 P a r t I I I : a r t I I I : W h a t Y o u C a n D oh a t Y o u C a n D o
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The Environment
Each year the U.S. alone consumes around 200 million tons of wood products, and this
number increases 4 percent each year. The biggest source of wood consumption is paper
production. U.S. paper producers consume one billion trees. That’s the same as 12,430
square miles of forests each year, resulting in 735 pounds of paper for each American.
Although the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it consumes 30 percent
of the world’s paper.
We’re not just picking on the Americans here. Worldwide consumption of wood
products has risen 64 percent since 1961. Industry expects that amount to double by 2050.
Losing trees and forest land isn’t the only problem. The process of deforestation has
released about 120 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO ) into the atmosphere. Also, 3 million
2
tons of chlorine are used each year to bleach paper. Chlorine is a major source of the
carcinogen dioxin, which is regularly dumped into rivers and streams as waste water.

NOTE Dioxin is bad stuff. It has been known to cause cancer, liver failure, miscarriages, birth
defects, and genetic damage in laboratory animals.

Your Costs
Handling paper can account for 30 percent of your organization’s overhead. This number
takes into account the average number of hours workers spend on tasks such as filing,
distributing, creating, retrieving, and destroying documents.
Further, a report from Gartner indicates that the average document is copied 9 to 11
times at a cost of about US$23. To file a document, it cost US$25. Even worse, the cost to
retrieve a misfiled document is US$153—Gartner, 1997.

Filing the document = $25

Document
created

Retrieving lost
document = $153

Average copies
cost = $23