Paper Recycling to the Earth's Salvation The world's land masses were once covered with vast tracts of uncharted forests, comprised of billions of trees that did everything from maintain the stability of topsoil against weather erosion, to filling the atmosphere with rich, essential oxygen.
Any pollution that was generated from natural disaster or human activity was capably absorbed by these trees.
Moreover, these trees provided shelter and sustenance for countless species of animals and plants.
Everything was fine and dandy until sometime in the last century, when human civilization's demand for wood and paper ravaged entire countries worth of forest land.
Today, the world has lost over 80 percent of its forests, and unless we take action now to replenish what little is left, we stand to lose the rest of our trees in the next 20 years.
Saving our trees does not, contrary to what people may think, involving chaining ourselves to them before a group of disgruntled loggers, or even joining the efforts of an ecological society.
Conservation of our forests may begin, interestingly enough, in the workplace.
The average office consumes tons of paper every year.
Employees print the shortest of e-mails to create paper trails for their files, burn through multiple hard copy drafts, and crunch entire reams of fresh paper to distribute documents that could just as easily have been passed around in an online form.
It is quite curious that, in an age where computer devices are becoming increasingly streamlined, portable and easy on the eyes, so many offices still insist on wasting paper like the supply is never going to run out.
This attitude has to change now.
The only sure way to reverse the current paper consumption trend is to allow some of that paper to be re-processed and returned to circulation, where it saves on cutting down more trees to produce virgin pulp.
This is the essential purpose of recycling.
It isn't difficult to encourage recycling in the workplace, as long as the office has the appropriate recycling bins for paper located in places that are accessible to everyone.
How hard is it to carry one's pile of waste papers to the nearest bin, accompanied by the knowledge that you are doing something to preserve the planet? The problem, really, is getting people to remember to recycle instead of just crumpling up pieces of paper and tossing them in with the other garbage.
People have to be reminded, and preferably not with some brown-nosing employee or eco-fanatic barking in their faces, telling them what they are supposed to do.
No, the best way to get the message across, in a friendly but persistent manner, is by using a paper recycling sign.
Experiments conducted on the power of suggestive reinforcement have shown that the presence of sign greatly improves the chances of a person adopting a particular habit that the sign espouses.
Some paper recycling signs that are strategically located near the bins and in common areas will persuade employees that recycling is an important policy of the workplace, without even taking into consideration how beneficial it will be to the environment.
Who knows? Each such paper recycling sign may end up saving a forest's worth of trees.