DESPOILING THE SACRED:
How Much Paper? A Bit Too Much Perhaps?
As I drive around or look out my front windows and view the lovely array of trees growing here in central Tennessee, I try to imagine the vastness of leaves in the world. How many leaves on that tree? Or this one? How many leaves are there on the average tree, if there is such a thing? For statistical purposes, I suppose an arborist or botanist could come up with a figure. Then there would be a separate figure for the number of needles on a pine… I boggle my mind with these thoughts… How many leaves are there in the world?
And yet, with the rain forests and other woodlands disappearing to the blades of the timber industry and the bulldozers of developers, how many have been lost? How many trees, how many leaves, how much potential for oxygen production and CO2 absorption?
Breathe deeply. It is necessary to breathe more deeply to accommodate the thinner mix we are left with. The same could be said for the kelp beds which in some areas of the seas have become sadly endangered.
How many pieces of paper are there in the world? Perhaps as many as the current leaf population. Such conjecture is unfounded and unprovable, yet it is food for thought.
If every American must deal with the same amount of paper in their lives as that which pours into my life from assorted sources, then the number would be incomprehensible to me. My unfounded guess is that not very many other countries would use the same per capita volume of paper each day, week, month or year as here in America.
“Oops! That’s a bad copy. Let me make another.” “Oh goody! Another envelope from Publisher’s Clearing House.” Every single EOB form from my insurance company sends with it a sheet of paper telling how to file a disagreement. It is the same thing each time, and also, if three EOBs come in the same envelope(good they are saving envelops and postage) they still send three of those crazy repetitive complaint forms with it.
Sell a house. Buy a house. The stacks of papers to sign is nearly six inches thick. How thick is the Obama Health Care Plan and how many copies have been printed?
Where I work we sell newspapers, among other things. On average, we sell about thirty copies of a given newspaper per day. They bring us ninety. Why? Then they pick up the leftovers. Someone said they recycle them into cellulose insulation or something. Why print all those extras in the first place?
Paperback books. Same story.
We despoil the sacred trees in an arboristic form of mass genocide, then we make paper, which we despoil with inanities and annoyances. When the used paper is not recycled, then even more trees are cut to grind into pulp for the creation of yet more paper products which will largely go unused, wasted or soiled and spoiled.
Do we not know that paper, because of its sources and the Source of its sources, is a sacred thing?
Worthy endeavors are worth the use of paper. Art, literature, currency*, first editions of new books and reprints of old classics, library books, reference, research and text books, wallpaper, stationary, greeting cards, and personal notes can all be deemed worthy uses of paper. I’m sure there are others.
But, overruns of mass market paperbacks, overruns of newspapers and magazines, excessive and unnecessary packaging materials** advertising junk mail and duplicates of duplicates in corporate cube farms are a sad, sad waste of paper… of trees.
The First Amendment to our Constitution of the United States declares most rightly, that we all have the right of free speech. That does not guarantee us the right to be wasteful. Some discretion must be used in publishing, advertising, the business world and government.
The written word is powerful and wonderful, and as a writer, I am fully supportive of writing in all avenues of endeavor. I do believe, however, that all industries from advertising to publishing to law and government, should take it upon themselves to plant a tree or donate to the Arbor Day Foundation for every ream of paper they consume. And I support the immediate cessation of any and all cutting of old-growth forests.
The planting needs to happen where things have already been cut, and not used to justify fresh cutting. Tree farms will be sufficient for the building and papermill industries. If that makes prices of paper and wood go up a little bit, then so be it. The price of a magazine will increase, but it will not matter because those who want to read it will do so anyway.
*I am surprised by how many people disrespect even the money they carry with them. So many times the money I take at the cash register at work is not only filthy, but is handed to me wadded up and crumpled like so much used toilet paper, or folded and refolded and drawn and written on. If we can respect the money that represents our abundance and livelihood, then what do we respect?
**Paper packaging is wasteful, but plastic packaging is another whole subject for another day!
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