[Greenbuilding] Embodied Energy of a sheet of paper

Thu Apr 10 08:05:55 CDT 2008

I have a question.  How many trees does it take to produce 100 square
feet of paper?  My office just finished a project and one roll of
drawings was over a 1000 square feet and we were wondering how many
trees were needed to produce that.

Josh

-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Tim Vireo
Keating
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 8:47 AM
To: Robert Carver; greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org
Cc: Joshua Martin
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Embodied Energy of a sheet of paper

Robert,

I would suggest starting with the Environmental Paper Network. Joshua
Martin ("Joshua Martin" <joshua at environmentalpaper.org> - I've copied
him on this email - hey, Joshua!) is the coordinator and he has access
to lots of folks who are very knowledgeable on paper issues, recycling,
etc.

Embodied energy calculations are notoriously difficult to do. Most that
I have seen neglect large parts of the equation, especially those that
have been done regarding wood.

There are a number of aspects that would have to be considered, some of
which are completely dependent on where and how the trees (if indeed
your paper is tree-based) were logged.

Was it old growth? Was it boreal forest, temperate tree farm, tropical
rainforest? Paper is originating from all of these, with great
differences in resulting carbon emissions or destruction of carbon
sinks. Mark Harmon at OSU has done a lot of work on carbon and logging
in the northwest forests, old growth vs. non, etc. Woods Hole Institute
has done a lot of work on carbon and tropical deforestation.

Then there the heavy equipment. Was it helicopter logging or
feller-bunchers? People with chainsaws? Then the trucking to the mill.
Then the massive amounts of energy use at the pulp/paper mill (some of
which comes from the sawdust and wood waste generated on site - a
suspect claim of offsets, given the trees should never have been logged
for paper in the first place. The energy to make the chemicals (paper
from trees is very chemical-intensive - not just the chlorine for
bleaching).

Then the box for every 10 reams and the shipping to the distribution
center then to the warehouse and then to the store. And don't forget how
you got it to the office (delivered, perhaps ("That was easy")?). 
:  )

Joshua, if something like this doesn't already exist, perhaps it's about
time that it did. The timber industry loves to cite the wonders of wood
vs. steel or concrete in terms of embodied energy, yet they never seem
to include all the factors.

tim keating

At 1:23 PM -0400 4/4/08, Robert Carver wrote:
>My organization is trying to be more sustainable in its business 
>practices.  One thing we are debating is defaulting all computer 
>printers to print double sided instead of single sided.  We have the 
>energy monitoring equipment to measure the energy consumption 
>differences between double sided and single side printing.  However, we

>are trying to find a citable source for the embodied energy savings for
using less paper.
>
>Does have such a citable value?  Any suggestions for where to look for 
>such a value?
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Robert M. Carver, P.E. ( - Bob - )
>Senior Project Manager
>New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
>17 Columbia Circle
>Albany, NY 12203
>tel: 518-862-1090 ext. 3242
>fax: 518-862-1091
>rmc at nyserda.org
>www.nyserda.org
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