Did you know that 500,000 trees must be cut down to produce each week's Sunday newspapers? In fact, recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

If all our newspaper was recycled, 250,000,000 trees each year could be saved. If every American recycled just 10% of newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.

The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This is about 2,000,000,000 trees per year.

The amount of wood and paper discarded each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. About one billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space, and nearly 36,000,000 tons of paper were recovered--twice as much in 1980.

Some 27% of the newspapers produced in America are recycled. Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution.

Those 17 trees saved can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Finally, the construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.