PSA: Save Our Earth
Voiceover: Every day, thousands of trees are toppled to make paper products. Already 95% of the United States’ old-growth forests have been leveled.
Picture: *Big Forest*
Voiceover: For every 3 tons of wood, only one ton of paper is made. For every tree toppled, only a quarter of the tree can be used to make paper.
Video: Tree falling
Voiceover: For every ton of paper made, 19,075 gallons of waste water is produced, water that cannot be used for human consumption. Some of this water is so contaminated it cannot be used for anything, lest the chemicals escape into the environment.
Video: Water running or a water containment facility
Voiceover. The amount of energy used to produce a ton of paper could be used to power a house for almost a year.
Video: Lightbulb going out
Voiceover: Paper products are used by everyone, despite the ecological downsides. However, the use of fresh paper is not economically good as well. American workers use over 8 million tons of copy paper each year, but the average worker wastes almost 1500 pages each year, at the average cost of 6 cents a page.
Video: Money
Voiceover: Paper accounts for as much as 60% of school waste, and 35% of the total material waste in the United States
Picture: Landfill
Voiceover: It doesn’t have to be this way though. There are alternatives to this destruction. If each family planted just one tree, over one billion pounds of carbon dioxide gas would be removed from the atmosphere each year.
Picture: Big-ass tree
Voiceover: Making recycled paper uses around 73% of the energy that making virgin paper uses. This saves enough energy to power a home for six months.
Video: Lightbulb turning on
Voiceover: Preventing one ton of paper from being wasted saves 17 trees.
Video: Sapling growing
Voiceover. Many things can be done electronically nowadays. Electronic banking,
Picture: Regions Bank Sign
Voiceover: Notes and Presentations
Picture: Note 3
Voiceover: Even students can do the majority of their work on computers, tablets, and laptops
Video: Someone typing on a laptop
Voiceover: Little changes like these can help ensure that generations to come can live on a healthy, sustainable Earth
Picture: Earth with little kids on it Be Green Segment:
GHS ECO-NEWS: Paper Usage
Commentator: Welcome, everybody to Garland High School Eco-News. I’m your host, Beverly Chukwu Today’s hot topic: Paper Usage in high schools. We’ll be speaking to researchers “Connie Ly” and “Laura Toler” about this issue. Let’s give them a warm applause.
(CLAP SOUND CUE. IF NOT, PEOPLE CLAP :D)
X: Thank you so much for having us.
Commentator: So tell us, how much paper is being used at Garland High School each year?
Y: About 6 tons of paper per year. And these are only numbers coming from major departments such as math, science, history and English and the office. We decided only to look at the departments that every school would have.
(Ooooh sound cue?)
Commentator: Wow. So almost 6 tons of paper a year? That’s a lot of paper. And how much of this paper comes from recycled paper?
X: Sadly, none. All of the paper at Garland High school is brand new paper. And this is detrimental to the environment.
Commentator: How so?
X: Well, Garland uses about 6 tons of paper. Every ton of “new” paper made uses 11, 134 KWh of energy. So the amount of paper Garland High uses needs about 66, 000 kWh of energy.
Commentator: That sounds like a lot of energy.
Y: It is. And the waste that comes from making new paper is also harmful to our environment. For example, it costs 2278 lbs of solid waste and 19, 075 gallons of water waste to make a ton of new paper. So that means the amount of paper Garland uses produces 13, 000 lbs of solid waste and 113, 000 gallons of water waste.
X: In standard units, that’s about 6100 kg of solid waste and 430,000 liters of water waste.
Commentator: That’s a lot of solid and water waste. And from what we can see in the community, the city of Garland could save as much water as possible, seeing that Lake Lavon is almost completely dry.
X: That’s right. If you’ve seen the lake recently, well it’s not really a lake anymore.
(Laugh cue)
Commentator: Well, aside from the solid and water waste, are there any other effects due to manufacturing “new” paper.
X: Cutting trees and manufacturing paper also produce greenhouse waste, like carbon dioxide. A ton of paper produces 5960 lbs. of greenhouse gases so 6 tons of paper produces 34,000 lbs. of greenhouse gases, or about 15, 000 kg of greenhouse gases.
Commentator: And greenhouse gas emissions link to global warming, right?
X: Yes that is correct.
Commentator: Well, since we’ve seen all the negative of effects of paper usage, what are some solutions to this issue?
Y: There are two main solutions to this issue: using recycled paper and going digital. Using recycled paper decreases the amount of energy used by 3500 kWH per ton, bring the number from about 65,000 kWh to 45,000 kwH. That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you apply that to all of the schools in the United States, which is about 24,000, every bit of energy counts.
X: Using recycled paper, however, increases the water waste, because in order to recycle paper, you have to de-ink the paper. And de-inking paper releases harmful metals such as copper, lead, and zinc into the water stream. Also, recycled paper uses 5000 gallons more water than regular paper, bringing the number from 112,000 to 140, 000 gallons. In SI, thats from 430,000 L to 550,000 L.
Y: Regardless, recycled paper has other benefits, such as decrease in trees used and decrease in greenhouse gas emission.
X: Making new paper uses 24 trees per ton and by recycling paper, you can cut down that number by 17 trees per ton. So you would only need to use 7 trees to make recycled paper.
Y: Also, recycling paper decreases the greenhouse gas emission by 73% bringing GHS from about 34,000 pounds of greenhouse gas to about 9100 pounds of greenhouse gas.
Commentator: So recycling does help. You both also mentioned that going digital could also help. Could you explain further on this?
X: Yes. Going digital would mean that you wouldn’t need to cut down trees obviously. Notes can be taken on laptops and tablets, assignments can done, and projects can be shared and presented. So when comparing all three means of communication (regular paper usage, recycled paper usage, and digital communication), the energy needed for each for all high schools in Texas are about 110 million kWh per year for regular paper, 78 million kWh per year for recycled paper, and 250 million kWh for digital communication.
Commentator: And what about for all high schools in the US?
In the US, the energy needed for each for all high schools in Texas are about 1.6 billion kWh per year for regular paper, 1.1 billion kWh per year for recycled paper, and 3.6 billion kWh for digital communication.
Y: Obviously not everyone has computers at home so schools would need to provide laptops or high-quality tablets to all students. This will be incredibly expensive in the short-term, even with school discounts and technology grants. However, if the school took out a warranty on the laptops to cover the damages that will incur and require that any laptop or laptop piece that is “lost” be paid for in full then in the long run it would costs schools about the same or less and ecologically it would be easier on the environment. It would also minimize transportation costs because schools will no longer require literal tons of paper to be shipped to them and tons of paper waste to landfills.
X: In conclusion, the short term solution would be to use recycled paper and the long term solution would be to use laptops.
Commentator: Well, thank you very much for joining us today on GHS Eco-News. This is your host, Beverly Chuckwu. Be green, Keep GHS clean.
