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CUTTING PAPER - IDEAS - International Comparisons |
International Comparisons of Paper Use
One way to assess resource use in different countries is to correlate its
use with the size of the economy.
Paper Consumption in the U.S. has
been remarkable stable at about 17 tons for each millions $ of GDP
for several decades.
The figure below shows paper use in different countries correlated to GDP.
Both the size of the economy (in GDP, Gross Domestic Product) and the
amount of resource use are both divided by the number of people in the
country.
"Paper" in the graph is "Printing and Writing Paper", a category which
is about 8 times larger than copy paper. Much of the rest "Printing
and Writing Paper" is used for purposes like magazines and books (newsprint
is not included in printing and writing paper). The graph shows paper
"consumed", not the amount of paper produced in the particular country.
The correlation between paper use and the size of the economy is impressive
but expected. As most paper is used to facilitate some economic activity,
having a larger economy -- all else being equal -- demands a higher level
of paper use. Similar relations have been shown for other resources such
as metals and energy.
The U.S. is known to be less resource efficient than other countries,
so the U.S. using more paper per dollar of GDP than most countries is expected.
This is probably exacerbated by the U.S. having a higher concentration
of paper-using office equipment and lower costs for many paper-using activities
(e.g. postage). A similar relation for all paper shows similar results.
Over time we should expect paper use in industrialized countries to
become more similar.
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