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, etc. that have a very short useful life and eventually become paper 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, is it really necessary to print new telephone directories every year? Why not increase the interval between reprints to two years? This will reduce the paper use for telephone directories by 50%. In fact with the development of the Internet, we can arrange in such a way that anyone with a computer can access telephone numbers on the computer screen without needing a paper copy. 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 adopt the policy that their advertisement sections will only be printed on alternate days (or 3 days a week), and on other days they would just issue a very slim version with the news only. This will cut their paper use by 50% without any significant loss in exposure. In fact with current Internet technology newspaper text can be delivered 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 without even being read. Why? Because they do not consider saving the lives of some trees to be very important.
Another product is toilet tissue. We now have bidet-with-vertical-sprays which are much cleaner, healthier than toilet tissue for cleaning the human body with water, without the need for any paper product. 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 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 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 we 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.
In nature many tree seedlings come up, but most of them are killed
by us in 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.
Within a few years, a tree crisis of catastrophic proportions will explode on us, unless we demand of our leaders to design governmental policies and tax structures that would tend to encourage reducing the use of paper for such short life products as newspapers, toilet tissue, phone directories, paper plates and napkins, etc.
As a first step, I appeal to readers who subscribe to paper versions of newspapers to try to terminate that subscription, or at least share that paper copy with several friends, office-mates, and neighbors. You probably watch the news on TV, or hear them on the radio; so reading a day-old newspaper shared with a friend will not be a great inconvenience. Any effort to reduce sales of newspaper-on-paper will definitely help tree survival.