Remember when pundits were talking about the “paperless society?” What happened to that? Even with all of the emails and texts and Facebooking and Tweeting, we’re still churning through stacks of paper. Everytime you buy or sell something, you get or give more paper. Even with newspapers hurting and decreasing in size and paring down the news as we get our daily fix of disasters, partisan politics and name-calling online, paper piles up. Phone books use 5 billion trees a year. In 2005, from the best anyone can tell, we cut enough trees to forest Ireland.
Not all forestry products get ground and mashed into pulp. We build stuff too. But “woodless” doesn’t really sounds as sexy as “paperless.” Woodless sounds like a terrible thing. Paperless sounds like a noble cause.
Flipping through junk mail yesterday, I wondered how many trees have gone through our mailbox. And there are twenty mailboxes on my little street, each filling with paper every day. Victoria’s Secret catalogs alone must have an entire forest leased for their personal use. I suppose skimpier clothes reqire more lumber. All-in-all, I’d estimate about 20,000 logs have slid through my mailbox over the years. I have no idea how to measure such a thing accurately, but I should be in a hell of a lot better shape for having carried that much wood up the driveway.
In a utopia paperless society, there would be no paper cuts, no ink on fingers, no paper airplanes, no spitballs. I personally love paper towels, as well. Not sure I want to go cold turkey on the Bounty. Besides, are we ready to be without toilet paper?
