Why recycle newspaper?

Have you ever wondered, as you picked up the Sunday edition of your local paper, how many trees it took to make that paper? A lot of people do, and while it takes much less than a whole tree to make a single newspaper, most people do consume about three trees per year in newspapers. It doesn’t sound like a lot—except that over 55 million people in the U.S. read newspapers regularly. In fact, it’s estimated that we may cut down as many as 200 million trees every year—just to feed our newspaper and other reading habits. That’s a lot of trees.

In 2005, over 9 million tons of newspapers were recycled. Of that, most—around 32%--wound up back in newspapers, recycled into newsprint in the U.S. and Canada. The rest of it went into other paper products, including cereal boxes, paperboard, grocery bags, tissue paper, and egg cartons. There’s plenty of demand for recycled newsprint on the market, particularly in cardboard and packaging.

With all those newspapers discarded after a single read—and with all that demand—you’d think there would be a strong newspaper recycling program in this country. And it could be worse; around 70% of all newspapers were recycled in 2003. It could be better, too, however; this means that around 30% of newspapers were simply sent to the landfill. That’s around 42 million trees in the U.S., every year.

It’s a common misconception that the problem with all this paper consumption, however, is primarily related to cutting down trees. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. While some paper companies do harvest their raw materials from virgin forests, many papermakers plant commercial crops of trees, and replant to replace trees cut down for use. So, technically, not all papermakers simply cut down swaths of trees to make paper without replacing them.

The problem arises when you take into account the types of forests a tree farm replaces when it’s planted. Often, older forests with adapted ecosystems are replaced with tree farms that contain different types of trees—often fast-growing softwoods and conifers. Tree farms aren’t particularly diverse in terms of species, which has a big impact—often not a good one—on the animals and other plants that once depended on a natural forest of very different trees.

Recycling paper—if we do it enough—may reduce the need for tree farms in the future, saving natural forests. It definitely reduces pollution, however. Recycling paper means that paper companies don’t have to make new paper from scratch. Every ton of recycled paper saves almost 8,000 gallons of water, plus three to four thousand kilowatt-hours of energy—enough to run a decent-sized house for a whole year. Recycling paper also puts out 95% less air pollution than manufacturing paper from scratch.

But wait, you say—newspapers are biodegradable. So if they’re thrown out in a landfill, they won’t last forever and pollute the environment—they’ll just break down. Right?

Actually, no. It’s true that newspapers are biodegradable and break down quickly—you don’t have the same problems in disposal as you would with, say, aluminum cans. However, the inside of a landfill isn’t conducive to quick rotting—landfills aren’t rich in moisture and oxygen, two things that facilitate the biodegrading process. And once paper finally starts to rot, the real problem sets in.

Paper is made of wood—a living thing—and like all formerly-living materials, when it rots, it produces methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas, 20 times worse than carbon dioxide. And when you think about how many tons of newspapers are put in landfills each year—13.2 million tons in 1995 alone—it’s a significant contribution to global warming. The bottom line? The more newspapers we keep out of landfills, the better.

Recycling newspapers in the U.S. is easy in most communities. In most places, you can simply tie stacks of newspapers together with cotton string or in a paper bag, and leave them on the curb—your recycling program should pick them up. If your city doesn’t have a curbside recycling program, community groups and schools sometimes have paper drives that take newspapers for recycling. You can also contact your local recycling center to see if they have a drop-off point. Paper is one of the most common recycled materials, and most recycling centers should take newspapers.

It’s easy, it’s good for the environment, it helps lessen greenhouse gas emissions, and it just might save a few trees along the way—so why not recycle those old newspapers? Next time you pick up a Sunday Times that you need two hands to lift, don’t think so much about the trees it took to make that newspaper—think more about recycling it when you’re done.