Paper Boys and Girls!

It’s funny how often a random conversation or occurrence will deliver a subject for my blog to me, usually when I’m sitting wondering what to write about.  This morning, it was my partner exclaiming over how many pieces of paper he found he had in his hand, as receipts for a one-off purchase at the local garage!  There were three pieces of paper in total – a till receipt, a card payment receipt, and an advice about a special offer.  Three separate pieces of paper, printed with the kind of ink that fades within a day of being touched or left in the sun so it needs to be either quickly squirreled away for safe keeping or instantly binned as irrelevant.

It kind of begs the question – why, in a so-called “electronic society”, do we still need so much paper?  Back in the olden days when we needed a paper trail to account for everything, long before internet banking took over and simplified it all, it made sense to have lots of receipts attesting to what we’d spent.  After all, our accountants used to shout at us if we couldn’t provide hard evidence for every last penny.  Nowadays, our bank statements do it for us, and there are various online systems that allow us to code and channel it all appropriately.  And even if we do still need evidential receipts, why does so much paper have to be involved?  Three receipts?  At the supermarket it is often more than that.  Usually there will be a coupon-shaped receipt informing us of how many pennies we’ve saved at Tesco by not shopping at Sainsbury’s, or vice versa. Half of the coupons for savings are only useful when you buy a certain brand of something, and are therefore only relevant to a small sector of the community who actually likes or wants to try that product.  The rest of us just stuff them into handbags, purses or pockets, to surface later as out of date, unreadable, or fluffy flotsam in the washing machine and all through the clothes.

You may or may not know that it takes roughly 24 trees to produce one tonne of paper, and you also may or may not know that here in the UK alone we are using TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION TONNES  of paper per year.  That’s a lot of trees.  No wonder the forests are thinning out so alarmingly across the world, reducing so many wildlife habitats in the process.  Those forests simply aren’t re-growing at the same rate at which they’re being decimated. And, since recycled paper produces a staggering 73% less air pollution than paper produced from raw materials, it makes more sense than anything else, to do just that.

Happily most recycling centres do accept paper, in various forms, such as magazines, phone books and catalogues, along with newspapers, flyers, cardboard and office paper.  It’s good that we are encouraged to recycle paper through the simple, convenient process of council collection, because if it was much more difficult than putting out the bin each week, we’d all be recycling a lot less.  Who has the time or space to collect waste paper and take it to the right place for recycling?   It needs to be convenient, literally on our doorstep, or we just don’t tend to do it. 

As important as it is to recycle what we’ve already produced, it makes even more sense to cut down on what we produce in the very beginning.  Even small pieces of paper, like till receipts, can start to mount up.  I’ve lost count of the times I’ve cleaned out a handbag and found a ridiculous amount of paper I haven’t so much as looked at since the moment it was put into my hand.  It floats around in the bottom of my bag and by the time I fish it out, most of it is unreadable anyway. Into the recycling bag it goes, if I’m anywhere near one.  If I’m not, it simply goes into a bin somewhere, if I’m out and about and finally sick of not being able to find whatever it is I’m really looking for in my bag, for so much paper being in the way.

Companies are notorious for the chronic waste of paper.  Since I changed to online bank statements and billing systems, I’ve noticed a huge drop in the piles of paper that tend to accumulate around the house, but some companies still send several pieces of correspondence to me in different envelopes, often within a day or two of each other.  Once, from Companies House, I received four separate letters in different envelopes within two days.  I do appreciate that the operating systems for companies and corporations may not lend themselves to compiling correspondence from different departments and sending it all out as one letter in one envelope, but surely there is something that can be done about the sheer volume of mail that gets sent in such a way?  How many more trees will it take?

Junk mail is also becoming more of a problem, and I have now resorted to putting a “no circulars” sign on my letterbox flap to try and stem the tide.  The run-up to Bank Holidays and Christmas are notorious times, when we can expect an avalanche of special offers to come storming through the flap, enticing us to enter their stores with the only type of paper they are interested in seeing – the lovely flash of cash.  And I guess it probably works.  My new sign means I don’t get to take advantage of some of these offers, but I’d rather go and hunt for what I want online and Google the specials, than deal with the relentless deluge of mail that comes marching into my house uninvited. It seems that every week we are throwing out a full bin of cardboard and paper, at least half of which I haven’t asked for and have no interest in reading.  I wouldn’t mind if it was paper bags for my fruit and vegetables, which I buy from the local Farmer’s Market, but they are still using plastic, and don’t get me started here on the perils of plastic, as that’s a whole ‘nother blog!

Overall, despite the electronic technology available to us all, we are still producing far too much un-necessary paper.  As individuals there’s a lot we can do to cut down on the amount of paper we manufacture and consume.  Since shop keepers seem relentlessly determined to foist receipts upon us for every little thing we buy, there’s not much we can do to avoid them, at least until they can figure out a better way of offering us proof of purchase.  But there are ways in which we can contribute to the ongoing regeneration of existing paper.

Buying recycled is a great way to start.  Just be aware that all recycled paper is not the same.  If something goes wrong in the milling process, the virgin pulp is often reused to make a fresh batch, and it is – technically – “recycled”.  When buying new paper, buying 100% post consumer waste recycled is making a significant contribution to the reduction in the number of trees that will need to be cut down for “virgin” paper, which is not necessarily of any better quality.  Toilet paper, printing paper, packaging and other forms of paper and cardboard can be purchased as recycled, with no compromise in the quality.  Some of the packaging on items from supermarkets is classed as recycled, so it pays to look at the labels.  Using reusable shopping bags helps as well, even though they are a bigger combatant against plastic.

Switching to online banking statements and other utility billing will dramatically reduce the amount of paper that comes into the home. So will paying attention to what you order online, because this is a really big factor in how much junk mail you end up getting.  Ensuring you tick the box rejecting unwanted mail from the companies you use, or from their ‘associate compatible’ partner companies, will mean you get fewer unwanted circulars to then have to dispose of.  You can also opt out of receiving telephone directories and catalogues for companies who also offer access to their wares online.

Many home printers now have a duplex function, enabling you to print double sided, which cuts down on the over-use of fresh paper.  When cutting and pasting information, particularly from the internet, reducing the spaces between blocks of text can dramatically reduce the amount of paper you need to use, to print a document.

All this aside, you can actually reuse a lot of the paper that somehow manages to make its way into the home. 

• Buying a cheap shredder will enable you to shred all kinds of paper items and use the shredding for packaging, for bird, hamster or guinea pig beds, and for compost.  Not all councils accept shredder paper for recycling, as its value is much less than intact paper and it creates a lot of mess in the streets if it’s unescured, so you do need to be careful when shredding, that you don’t produce more than what you need. 
• Old Christmas cards can be glued into a “Santa Scrapbook”, and sent to the Children’s Wards of various hospitals.  It’s a nice project for the kids to do over the holidays or on rainy days.  You can also make bunting from the card faces for decorations for their bedrooms. 
• Toilet roll centres can be folded up inside one another until full and then used as “briquettes” for lighting the fire.  They can also be used in the garden to protect young seedlings when they first poke their heads above the soil.  
• Gift wrap, ribbons and tissue paper can be reused. The backs of used envelopes are handy for jotting down shopping lists or notes. The blank backs of non-confidential letters can be cut into four to make note paper. 
• Magazines can be shared with friends, or donated to your local doctor or dentist surgery. 
• Newspapers can be used to make pots for seedlings.  They also act as insulation in a variety of situations.  I remember I once rode a motorcycle in the pouring rain for three hundred and fifty miles with a newspaper stuffed down the front of my jacket.  It kept me completely dry!  I also had one under my coir doormat, which helped protect the porch floor in winter. Just be careful that your newspaper insulation doesn’t become any kind of fire hazard!  

There’s no doubt we are getting more savvy about recycling, and paper is one of the easiest and friendly substances to regenerate.  Councils are helping, but we can’t rely on them to deal with all of it, or provide all the answers.  We need to think for ourselves about how we can reduce the pressure on our environment caused by the over-production and waste management of paper and its associated by-products, and put that thought into action.

I’d love to hear about any paper saving or recycling ideas that people are putting into practice.  Please do share your thoughts and ideas here, because if we can all help one another learn and do, it can only lead to a better world for the future generations who stand to inherit it.  It will be fabulous if they can still have plenty of trees to look at, and to purify the air they need to breathe!