How many trees are cut down to make one piece of paper?
It would take a rough average of 24 trees to produce a ton of printing and writing paper. We can estimate that it takes about 12 trees to make a ton of ground wood and newsprint.
1 ton of uncoated virgin (non-recycled) printing and office paper uses 24 trees
1 ton of 100% virgin (non-recycled) newsprint uses 12 trees
A “pallet” of copier paper (20-lb. sheet weight, or 20#) contains 40 cartons and weighs 1 ton. Therefore,
1 carton (10 reams) of 100% virgin copier paper uses .6 trees
1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets
1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly!)
1 ton of coated, higher-end virgin magazine paper (used for magazines like National Geographic and many others) uses a little more than 15 trees (15.36)
1 ton of coated, lower-end virgin magazine paper (used for newsmagazines and most catalogs) uses nearly 8 trees (7.68)
23 trees needed for making a ton of paper
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