The State of the Paper Industry: Monitoring the Indicators of Environmental Performance

This report from the Environmental Paper Network offers a comprehensive resource for paper-industry professionals as well as paper purchasers and others interested in learning how paper affects the environment and how the industry can improve its performance.

The report is divided into four key goals for the industry as a whole: minimize paper consumption, maximize recycled content, source fiber responsibly and employ cleaner production practices.

In discussing each of these goals, the Environmental Paper Network highlights and suggests solutions to the many effects of the paper industry, including forest loss (and associated increases in carbon dioxide emissions), habitat destruction, air and water pollution and production of toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases.

The paper seeks to answer two basic questions:

How can a product that is so interwoven in our lives have such devastating effects? And more to the point, what can we do to avoid, slow, or reverse the harmful consequences of wood harvesting, pulp and paper manufacturing, and paper use and disposal?

In asking the questions and presenting answers, the EPN hopes to make progress toward a more sustainable and environmentally friendly paper industry.