The carbon footprint of a piece of paper

The carbon footprint of a piece of paper

Zoey Gingell

26 Jan 2023

Orange Flower
Orange Flower
The carbon footprint of a piece of paper


Did you know that producing 100,000 sheets of paper from new sources requires over 8 trees and almost 2,000kWh of energy?

It has a carbon footprint of 6,000kg (from energy required to create the paper and dispose of it in landfill eight times). Papercan, on average, be recycled seven times. It’s much more energy efficient tocreate new paper from recycled sources than to create it from scratch. A‘life-cycle carbon footprint’ looks at the total amount of energy required to produce, recycle and dispose of paper throughout its useable life.

The same amount of paper recycled seven times, has alife-cycle carbon footprint of 3,200kg (from the amount of energy required to create the paper, recycle it seven times and then dispose of it in landfill).

That’s a 47% saving by using recycled paper.

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