Feeling good about making my household paper towel free (for the last 3 months!) after reading an article with these statistics:
-700 pounds of paper are consumer by the average American each year.
-Paper manufacturing is the 3rd largest user of fossil fuels worldwide.
-The U.S. used approximately 68 million trees each year to produce 17 billion catalogues and 65 billion pieces of direct mail.
-The U.S. uses 25% of the world's paper products.
-Approximately 324 Liters of water is used to produce 1kg of paper.
-40% of the U.S. landfill trash is paper products.
Even reading through that article made me realize, it's not just paper towels. It's every paper product we consume. It's magazines, dinner napkins, junk mail to product packaging. I never gave much thought to how much one person consumes. Knowing the effect it's having on our planet will definitely make me think twice about each paper product I use.
My goal this week: Use hand dryers in public restrooms, cloth napkins at dinner & read gossip magazines/news/books...online! Hope these facts make you more consious of your own paper use.
