why conserve?

The average American uses more than 748 pounds of paper per year. ¹
Approximately 68 million trees are consumed each year to produce the catalogs and junk mail Americans receive annually, yet nearly half of this mail is thrown out unopened. ²
Paper manufacturing is the third largest use of fossil fuels worldwide and the single largest industrial use of water per pound of finished product. ³
Waste paper is America’s single largest export by weight. ⁴
Discarded packaging represents over 30 percent of the soil waste buried in U.S. landfills each year. ⁵
Approximately 5% of the resources used to produce a product are contained in the final product. The other 95% has been discarded during the production process. ⁶
If everyone on the planet consumed as much as Americans, we would need 4 planet Earths to support the total amount of consumption. ⁷
Printing inks and toner are the second largest uses of carbon black, which is primarily
derived from oil. Even the manufacture of soy-based inks typically involves the extensive use of diesel fuel, petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides. ⁸
The United States, with only four percent of the world’s population, is responsible for 22% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.⁹
The Northeast region of the U.S. is the 6 largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. ¹⁰
More than a million species worldwide will be on the path to extinction by 2050 if business as usual continues. ¹¹

American Forest and Paper Association
AIGA: Print Design and Environmental Responsibility
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - By William McDonough & Michael Braungart, North Point Press, 2002
Union of Concerned Scientists: Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions
AIGA: Print Design and Environmental Responsibility
StopGlobalWarming.org
Union of Concerned Scientists: Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions
Conservation International: New Cover Story Published In "Nature" Represents Most Comprehensive Analysis To Date