• Producing pulp and paper casts a long ecological shadow beyond its impacts on the world's forests. Converting trees into paper uses large amounts of water, energy and chemicals and can generate vast amounts of air and water pollution.
  
  
• The pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4 percent of all the world's energy use.
  
  
• The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
  
  
• Consumers play a pivotal role in reshaping the future of the pulp and paper industry, 40 percent of office paper still ends up in overburdened landfills.
  
  
• Expanding the reuse of paper reduces the pressure to cut more trees, reduces demand on overburdened waste disposal systems and cuts energy use and pollution. One ton of recycled paper produces one ton of new paper, which is far more efficient than using virgin wood fiber.
  
  
• Annual plants such as flax and hemp are rapidly renewable resources which can contribute to more environmentally-sound fiber blends.
  
  
• Flax and hemp yield longer fibers and can assist in creating high quality paper when added to shorter fiber resources such as recycled office paper (post-consumer waste).