[Web4lib] Paperless society

[K.G. Schneider]

I always hate to break up a good discussion with the facts. However,
paper generation has been rising for over four decades. In the United
States, 1995-2005 showed a slowing trend, but not a reversal. This is in
keeping with the Times' statement that worldwide, paper usage has
"plateaued." 

See:

http://www.epa.gov/garbage/pubs/mswchar05.pdf p. 38 and passim

Note that books are a very small percentage of the total paper waste --
on a par with grocery bags (p. 37, table 4). Corrugated paper (as in
boxes) is *huge* -- five times that of office paper production. That
doesn't mean that we shouldn't aggressively tackle source reduction in
all areas -- just wanted to put into perspective that every book
published could go digital-only and we'd still have a massive
environmental problem caused by our appetite for paper. As the Times
(again, accurately) reported, "The paperless office, which some experts
had said would be the norm by the 1990s, has so far failed to
materialize."  

I'm the world's lamest reference librarian, so perhaps someone can find
more current statistics, but a quick search for "paper consumption
site:epa.gov" hoovered this up immediately.

K.G. Schneider
kgs at freerangelibrarian.com 
(& former director, EPA Region 2 Library)