WE DON’T KNOW THE WORTH OF TREES UNTIL THEY’RE GONE by: Emma Hall

Gibbs’ Helping Hands Gibbs has had a recycling group, the Radical Recyclers, for 20 years. All of the teachers recycle the catalogs they get. Gibbs has a partnership with Goldman Recycling. We use recycled paper from a law firm. Per person, we at Gibbs are recycling more paper than any other school in the Little Rock School District. Per month, we save trees, gallons of oil, 3.51 cubic yards of landfill space, 4,680 kilowatts of energy, and 8,190 gallons of water. What Gibbs Already Does

Astonishing Tree Facts 1 tree can be made into 12,500 sheets of paper year old tree can produce half a box of paper. Rainforests now cover 6% of the Earth’s surface. Rainforests are cut down at a rate of 100 acres a minute!

More Astonishing Tree Facts Every year, 17 million trees are cut down to supply fax paper for the U.S. Enough paper is thrown away each year to make a 12’ wall from New York to California! We throw enough wood and paper away to heat 50 million homes for 20 years!

Still More Astonishing Tree Facts Per year, about 4 trees are cut down for faxing in an average U.S. company.

Astounding Paper Facts Annually, 210 billion sheets of paper are used by faxing in U.S. companies. 10,000 sheets of paper are used by the average office worker each year. About 95% of this paper will be thrown away eventually. Per year, about 4 trees are cut down for faxing in an average U.S. company.

More Astounding Paper Facts An everyday American will buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That’s the equivalent of 500,000 trees. Newspapers take up 13% of landfill space. The New York Times uses 75,000 trees to print the Sunday edition.

Benefits of Paper Recycling 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water are saved by 1 ton of recycled paper. Recycling 1 ton of paper uses 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, 64% less energy, and creates 5 times more jobs than 1 ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp would.

Benefits of Paper Recycling Continued If everyone in the U.S. recycled 1/10 of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year! If everyone recycled all of their sunday newspaper, we would save about 550,000 trees a year! We’ll never run out of paper if we recycle it.

More Benefits of Paper Recycling Paper recycling reduces greenhouse gasses. The need for landfills or incineration is reduced, decreasing the amount of CO2. If everyone used a paper bag for 1 grocery trip, about 60,000 trees could be saved!

Still More Benefits of Paper Recycling 1 ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees (that are 35’ tall), 2 barrels of oil (enough to fuel the average car from Dallas to L.A.), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for your average house for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of air pollution. A 40’ fir tree is saved by recycling a 4’ stack of newspapers.

The Past Rainforests once covered 14% of Earth’s surface. They now cover 6. The worldwide use of paper has grown 400% in the last 40 years. We have used paper made from plants for over 6,000 years.

The Future If we keep cutting down the rainforest at this rate, it could be consumed in less than 40 years! It is predicted that in this decade Americans will throw away over 4.5 million tons of office paper and nearly 10 million tons of newspaper!