okay. My eyes were glazing over, and I tried to read it the best I could, but are the trees really in danger or not? I'm not a treehugger, but when that talk first came out as I was in junior high school I never heard from the contrary.
There was an article from a SCANDINAVIAN country recently, like last summer, saying that recycling was a big waste.
Here are the pertinent quotes concerning trees--hope this helps:
1. "Every week," Dittersdorf said, "75,000 trees are cut to make the Sunday New York Times."
2. We're squandering irreplaceable natural resources. Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today's newspaper. But even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America's supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation's forests have three times more wood today than in 1920. "We're not running out of wood, so why do we worry so much about recycling paper?" asks Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "Paper is an agricultural product, made from trees grown specifically for paper production. Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption."
3. Should you recycle today's newspaper? Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there's less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms -- maybe to condominium developers. Less virgin pulp means less pollution at paper mills in timber country, but recycling operations create pollution in areas where more people are affected: fumes and noise from collection trucks, solid waste and sludge from the mills that remove ink and turn the paper into pulp. Recycling newsprint actually creates more water pollution than making new paper: for each ton of recycled newsprint that's produced, an extra 5,000 gallons of waste water are discharged.
When you get the time, read the article. It's fascinating.