In the USA we have become experts in converting nicely growing young trees into paper products like newspapers, telephone directories, magazines, paper plates and napkins, tetra pack containers, cardboard, etc. that have a very short useful life and eventually become trash. The quantity of paper that we use is much higher than any other country in the world. In fact some countries like Canada are depleting their forests to meet the US demand for paper.
It is possible to reduce the amount of paper devoted to such short-time-uses easily, but nobody seems to care. For example, telephone number data can be installed on the web, and people can access this data on their computer screens without needing a paper telephone directory. But the phone companies want to publish new phone directories every year because they make huge sums of money from advertising revenues.
In the same way it is quite easy for newspaper companies to deliver news to their subscribers electronically without printing it on paper at all. However, newspaper companies continue producing their product every day, most of which is junked by the public on the same day it is produced, sometimes without even being read. Why? Because they do not consider saving the lives of some trees to be important.
Another product is toilet tissue. We now have bidet-with-vertical-spray, which cleans the human body with a powerful spray of water, without the need for any toilet tissue. It is much cleaner and healthier than toilet tissue. With the simple turn of a cap, this tool produces a powerful stream of water vertically upwards to clean the body. It is a totally hands-free operation that is so pleasant to use. If the majority of households in our country switch to bidet-with-vertical-sprays, we will not only save a lot of trees, but also reduce the amount of sewage to be treated substantially.
What is the basic reason for our callous attitude towards trees? Mainly because most of us think that trees are there for us to kill and use anyway we like.
The American poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer(1886-1918) wrote a very famous poem about the beauty of trees which I quote:
Trees.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Unfortunately, most present generation Americans do not
seem to have this kind of respect for trees. We kill them in large numbers
daily. Also, the recent growth in e-technology/e-commerce has
increased the need for cardboard for packaging enormously, and many trees are killed to make wood pulp with which cardboard is manufactured.
In nature many tree seedlings come up, but most of them are killed
while mowing, weeding, cultivating, thinning, golfing, skiing, snowmobiling, driving, or
other forms of trampling involved in human activities. So, the few
that survive and grow in spite of all this mishandling should
be harvested only for really essential uses. We need to appreciate
that the purpose of trees in nature is to grow, their main purpose in life
is not to be killed by greedy humans for conversion into instant
trash.