The state of the paper industry

This report represents the Environmental Paper Network’s (EPN) effort to identify the most important indicators to use when evaluating the environmental performance of the pulp and paper industry. [...] The biggest greenhouse gas releases in pulp and paper indicators to use in evaluating the environmental perform- manufacturing come from the energy production needed to ance of the pulp and paper industry. [...] On The indicators in this report focus exclusively on the the other hand, the United States has historically been the environmental performance of the paper industry. [...] Indicators world’s largest producer and consumer of paper, and much of that have been more traditionally used to monitor the state of the available data related to the environmental indicators is the paper industry, such as economic performance, are not from the United States. [...] It is responsible for violations of land rights papermaking began in the mid-1800s after the invention of in many places where the fiber for paper is the Fourdrinier paper machine, and the development of the sourced, both in natural forests and by the estab- chemical pulping process that enabled the conversion of trees lishment of plantations on land without the con- into paper pulp.