The Negative Impact of Deforestation and the Paper Industry

For the past several years, the demand for paper has gradually inclined, resulting in anywhere from 4 billion to 8 billion trees being cut down each year.

Around 405 million tonnes of paper and paperboard are produced, totalling around 13-15% of total wood consumption. 

Paper production has a significant impact on the environment. The sector is the fourth largest industry when it comes to energy consumption. Paper production also requires a significant amount of water and its usage in the paper industry is larger than other industries such as steel and petrol. While everything takes energy to produce, paper production needs twice the energy of the plastic bag.

The Link Negative Impact of Deforestation and the Paper Industry

In the case of paper production, it is a complex process involving cutting down trees into a single piece of paper. Typically valuable trees are harvested first. The forest is then levelled with the remaining trees sent to a mill where they are chipped into pulp, which is then either exported or turned into paper. 

The clear land is planted with eucalyptus or acacia, which would be harvested on a 6-8 year cycle. When timber prices are high, a pulp and paper company may sell the tree trunks for timber and only use the branches and other fibre for pulp.

Vast swatches of rainforest have been chopped down to supply the pulp and paper industry.

It is one of the factors that cause deforestation around the world. Deforestation is one of the main environmental problems we’re facing at these times. According to The World Counts, 42% of all global wood harvest is used to make paper.

Worldwide deforestation is estimated to be responsible for about 12% of greenhouse gas emissions. Forests house carbon in wood, leaves and soil. 

Those ecosystem services are vital. Wherever forests are found, they provide carbon sequestration, protection against floods, landslides and soil erosion, as well as harbouring a rich biodiversity of plants and animals, and raw materials for medicines, not to mention the 300 million people that call forests their home around the world.

When loggers, developers paper industry players cut down forests, CO2 escapes into the atmosphere. A deforested area did not have the capability to absorb and store CO2 anymore.

The Challenges of Paper Notes

There is no doubt that paper has already contributed to human life. There are literally thousands of life-changing innovations, philosophy, arts, mathematics, and any other knowledge revelation that have been written into proper books for the advancement of humankind. But in this era where digital technologies have largely impacted our life, and the scarcity of natural resources that we have to preserve for the sake of our earth, isn’t there any good we can do to stop our dependency on paper? 

Plus, paper is quite challenging to use in this booming digital era where everything is moving in fast way. There are countless challenges to entirely relying on paper notes. 

Paper notes are easy to lose and can get messy real quick, which can be a massive disadvantage if we are not highly-organized individuals. They also take up a lot of physical space, growing one notebook after the next until you have no room left in your drawers.

Accessibility is another con of paper notes. You cannot easily share them with others, you need the specific notebook on hand to read its content, and the cost of quality stationery quickly adds up.

The Impacts of Digitalization In Today’s World Society

Digital technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in our history – reaching around 50 per cent of the developing world’s population in only two decades and transforming societies. By enhancing connectivity, financial inclusion, access to trade and public services, technology can be a great equaliser.

In the health sector, for instance, AI-enabled frontier technologies are helping to save lives, diagnose diseases and extend life expectancy. Virtual learning environments and distance learning have opened up programmes to students who would otherwise be excluded. Public services are also becoming more accessible and accountable through blockchain-powered systems and less bureaucratically burdensome as a result of AI assistance. Big data can also support more responsive and accurate policies and programmes.

So, are there any beneficial impacts towards green sustainability? The answer is yes. Even though digital technologies do not directly impact our future forests, it still has a significant answer to our problems.

Within the last few decades, the impacts of digital life have changed significantly. It is barely possible to imagine what daily life would look like without all those used gadgets. A big proportion of people are doing their work mainly on a computer, everyone is checking their mobile phones a lot of times every day.

Basically, digitalization has made our daily life a lot easier with everything at our fingertips. This advancement has also changed our way to write and reading via e-notes. The usage of e-notes has been rapidly widespread, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Millions of students, workers, businessmen and others switch to e-notes. The usage of e-notes is more practical in digital ecosystems where everything needs to be uploaded, downloaded and sent online.

Instead of keeping dozens of physical notes and notebooks that are hard to store and move around, we can be tech-savvy by keeping all our e-notes in a single cloud storage. Organizing everything in this medium means we can access a years-worth of notes on our phones, desktop or laptop.

The question of whether e-notes can be the perfect replacement for paper is undoubtedly irrelevant because it is clear that we can do so during the pandemic crisis. So why aren’t we continuing to walk on this clear path after the crisis is resolved?

E-notes are one of the many resolutions we can make in order to contribute something to the good of Mother Earth. Even though one might think this is just a small contribution, a small step is still progress towards a brighter future compared to nothing.

At the end of the day, we ourselves can clearly think that it is not worth it to destroy our earth just to make a tiny piece of paper to write something.