How Much Paper Does A Tree Produce?
How Much Paper Does A Tree Produce? Nowadays there are a lot of offices that are trying to go paperless. Seems to be for the right reasons. It has more to do with less mess in the office than it has to do with our environment.
The less paper we use, the more trees we save.
I’ve always wondered how much paper can be made from one tree, let’s find out.
IS THERE A WAY TO FIGURE OUT HOW MUCH PAPER ONE TREE MAKES?
Most paper is made out of -pine trees though some of the manufacturers will use different trees. The use of other trees can be to create more pulp or to create a different textured paper.
Different trees are always different sizes. So, it makes it a little hard to be able to answer the question. “How much paper does one tree make?”. Even threes of the same kind, like pine trees, differ in size depending on the age and their environment.
WHAT IS THE AVERAGE AMOUNT OF PAPER FROM ONE TREE?
On average, one tree that has about forty – five – feet of the trunk that can be used will make about ten thousand sheets. Think about it like this, one ream or pack of paper, five hundred sheets, uses only five percent of a tree trunk. I know, it doesn’t sound like a lot does it?
But consider this, how many boxes of paper does each office use per day. And how many offices do we have just in the United States alone?
That adds up amazingly fast!
Magazines and other types of paper with a high-quality kind of print use so much more. For coated paper, just one tone uses about seventeen trees! For stuff like newspapers, you are looking at about twelve trees.
Can you imagine how many trees are used every day just for paper?
No? That’s okay that question will be answered a little later.
There are a few other things to think about when trying to figure out. How many trees does it take to make what amount of paper? One thing is whether or not recycled material is used.
You need to think about the thickness of the paper being made and how much wood pulp goes into it. All of these things need to be calculated for a more accurate figure.
How Much Paper Does A Tree Produce?
You need to look at the fact that paper usage has gone up by at least four hundred percent in the last four decades. What’s that mean? It means that we are cutting down around two million trees a day for making paper!
That’s around four billion per year! Think about that the next time you waste paper.
How Much Paper Does A Tree Produce?
Have you ever just looked at a tall tree and wondered how they turn those huge things into little thin sheets of paper? Well, for starters, the right kind of tree has to be chosen.
CHOOSING THE TREE
It has to be decided what kind of tree you need because different trees will make different textured paper. Pine is a softwood, and it has long fibers, this is great for strength.
Hardwood makes shorter fibers that are not strong and are used more for writing paper and printing paper.
Turning trees into paper starts with “logging”. This has to be done carefully to avoid harming other trees in the area.
PAPERMAKING TIME
The raw wood has to go through a process that turns all of the wood into pulp. Certain chemicals and the fibers from the wood are mixed together. This is called chemically processing.
It can also be done with mechanical processing. The mechanical process causes the paper to be weaker than the chemical process. Mechanically processed paper is generally used for phone books and newspapers.
Chemical processing is done by spraying the pulp on mesh screens. It is then put through several different processes to get most of the water out of the pulp.
Once this is done it is considered to be paper. It’s then put through a heating process. And is heated until there is only about six percent water content left in it.
At this point, the paper is usually put through certain types of treatments to get different textures from it. Afterward, it’s time to have it wound on a reel. These reels are huge! A crane has to be brought in to move them, that’s how big they are.
CONCLUSION:
We’ve found out how paper is made and how much paper can be made from one tree. It seemed like a lot at first until we learned that two million trees are cut down every day for paper.
It’s actually a shocking amount! Maybe we should all consider planting a few more trees in our yards!