Recycling Fact - How Much Tree Goes Into a Ream of Paper?

Thanks to Jeff Henrie from DOPL for providing us this information. We have often heard that we are saving trees by recycling paper, but what are the actual numbers involved? It depends on the type of paper and on whether the paper is coated (see full article at http://conservatree.org/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml); here are some numbers:

SOME TYPICAL CALCULATIONS

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)

How do you calculate how many trees are saved by using recycled paper?

(1) Multiply the number of trees needed to make a ton of the kind of paper you're talking about (groundwood or freesheet), then

(2) multiply by the percent recycled content in the paper.

For example,

1 ton (40 cartons) of 30% postconsumer content copier paper saves 7.2 trees

1 ton of 50% postconsumer content copier paper saves 12 trees.

So what about E-readers like iPad and Kindle- are they saving trees? Here are couple of articles about their environmental impact:

Should You Ditch Your Books for an E-reader?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2010/08/should_you_ditch_your_books_for_an_ereader.html
How Green is My iPad?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html