Save a Forest: Print Your Emails--A Different Lesson in Being Green

Recently International Paper Company reprinted a story from the Wall Street Journal that encourages us to print our emails to save a forest.

Huh?

The common perception is that "being green" means keeping trees, not using paper and natural resources. However, the authors, Chuck Leavell and Carlton Owen, argue otherwise.

"What many folks don't realize is that it (not printing) also may indirectly hasten the conversion of forests to other uses like strip malls and parking lots and housing developments because the nation's forest landowners can't keep growing trees without markets for this natural, organic and renewable product," Chuck wrote for the WSJ.

It is not that the authors are advocating waton waste, they said. More forests are dying of insect infestation and disease or being paved over...right now than could be converted to an email print-out in a thousand years, they said.

Paper is a renewable resource and using it carefully and recycling it and its byproducts is more green than ignoring it completely. So be green by using paper.

The Executive Pressman