Tree Chat on Twitter
Every Tuesday nature lovers get together on Twitter to talk about trees. If you would like to join us, simply hashtag your tree themed tweets with treechat. This week’s Tree Chat theme was palm trees.
With more than 900 million tress cut down every year to support US consumption of paper products, one has to ask if this is gross negligence?
Every year the US blows through 26 billion rolls of toilet paper, which equates to 2.4 billion dollars in revenue and 98% of the TP comes from virgin forests! If the average is 23.6 rolls of TP per capita, does that support the argument that bath tissue is the paper industry’s hummer?
With alternatives to virgin products readily available, such as recycled paper with PCW (Post Consumer Waste), that will save per ton of tissue paper manufactured:
Twenty fully grown trees
26000 liters of water
4100 kwh of energy (enough to power a home for 6 months)
1700 liters of oil
3.06 cubic yards of landfill space
587 pounds of air pollution
If you elect to use recycled paper, you have certainly taken some steps to do something, as opposed to nothing at all.
Our paper is made from 100% tree-free fiber – bagasse which is the by-product from the sugar manufacturing process. It is the PERFECT solution and alternative to its normal disposal process of either deposited to a landfill or worse yet – burning. We make a beautiful paper from a 100% recycled by-product!
• The paper is made from a recycled pre-consumer short fiber waste product. It is “cleaner” than any recycled paper because the raw material has not been thru the de-inking process and never has been “used” by consumers.
• The cost of the product is less than 100% recycled paper.
• Our LCA, Life Cycle Analysis, indicates a positive rating as compared to tree-based wood fiber papers.
• Independent paper laboratories recommended by Georgia Tech and other major Universities have tested Green2 tree free paper.
• The sugar manufacturing companies that we obtain our sugarcane (bagasse) from manufacture sugar and have continuous social-responsibility auditors to insure labor and safety law compliance.
• The water that we use in the manufacturing process is filtered and used to irrigate the sugarcane plantation. It is returned back to the earth cleaner than when we retrieve it from our river source. It takes significantly less water to grow a sugarcane crop (2X per year) than it take to grow a tree for 15 -20 years.
Overall, we consider our tree free paper as a GREAT alternative to tree-based papers. Remember, 30% recycled paper is still 70% virgin pulp and 100% recycled paper still started with a tree. It is our belief that trees belong in nature – not paper. The ancient Egyptians made good paper from renewable sources other than trees and their scrolls survive to this day!
If you want to help the planet and care for the future generations to come, cleaning up your own garbage is simply not enough. You have to livethe changes you want to see. And, you will have to teach your children at the same time. Large industry will only change for the better if the individuals that seek change make them change.
