Toilet paper is more linked to global warming than photocopy paper. Imagine a paperless society with that one. And consider the BS nonsense about CO2 linked to emissions trading commissions and making money from nothing. At least Online Forum Australia is providing digital space for albeit sensible debate.

In reality, toilet paper in sewage is feeding bacteria producing nutrients feeding ocean algae.
Algae in water has warmth retaining capabilities.
Unprecedented sewage nutrient pollution is being dumped in the world ocean ecosystem.
Evidence of substance indicates abundance of micro and macro algae in areas of ocean is now historically unprecedented and should be expected to be.
Ocean produced well over 50 percent of world oxygen.
Ocean covers the majority of our planet’s surface.
Ocean dominates control of weather.
Ocean not desert or ice provides water vapour that can be seen forming clouds that stream into a tornado, cyclone, hurricane.
Increased water vapour must be expected from increased warmth in oceans.
Increased water vapour due to photosynthesis linked to solar warmth in ocean algae plant matter has not been measured and assessed in AGW - Kyoto science.

Mindset on CO2 nonsense is time wasting and therefore dangerous, allowing ongoing unchecked collapse of world ocean food sustainability under impact of increased algae.
It’s what is written on photocopy paper or digitally that should be counted. And real life situations should be seen and not covered up.
Watch right now (6 March 2013) as water vapour appears picked up from the Great Barrier Reef lagoon to form a perhaps major cyclone. GBR waters are presently inundated with nutrient pollution from coastal sewage adding to the resuspended ancient and modern nutrient pollution loading from estuary seabed being excavated at Gladstone.

There is no science to prove such anthropogenic nutrient loading is not producing unprecedented algae and influence on weather.

First up, let me declare that I couldn't care less about the environment, ecosystems, biodiversity or preserving forests, but I can agree with the sentiment of the author with respect to the thoughtless use of paper by office workers of Australia.

Tom Lucas writes, "Every day this happens, in offices all over Australia and the world. Piles of paper are unnecessarily printed..."

And this from Valley Guy, "I was bewildered and disheartened, in the decades since, it's only gone downhill."

Absolutely correct in both cases.

I too, like Valley Guy, work in IT and am amazed at the lack of technological nous of people working in offices today. Paper, paper, paper is all they think about. I was amazed at their lack of understanding of how to use electronic data. It's sort of like they think computers are simply there as fancy tools to replace typewriters.

As for the author, I gather he works closely with academics, who in my opinion are probably amongst the worst. They write and publish "papers" and even when they do end up putting it into electronic format, they always use the clunky photo-facsimile format called PDF, which emulates paper based presentation. They can't seem to get their heads out of it. They style documents with a paper based layout, sometimes even in double columns (makes scrolling painful), they insert page breaks and even paginate it, despite there being absolutely no need whatsoever to do it in an electronic document!

I can only think that it's got to do with habits learned in schools and universities.

Exasperation.

Maybe the next generations might actually turn out electronically data literate because of tablets now beginning to be used in k-12 -

appleinsider.com
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/06/news-corp-to-challenge-apples-ipad-in-education-with-amplify-tablet

Cheers all.

Waste paper can be recycled so what exactly is the problem?
Care as raised in the post above, is another thing.
To not care about ecosystems is perhaps to be expected due to the 'cry wolf' reaction in some humans, due to the cry from radical greens about just about everything. CO2 nonsense comes to mind especially. The nonsense is driving people to be anti environment.
However, ecosystems support natural and rural food production and world food sustainability.

JFK Aus.

Well said that man!

I was more of a paper-waster before I had to buy my own! Now I print as little as I am able. And I'm not much drawn by the request to consider the environment, for all the reasons already given. If I had the time I would devise one that would work for me, but then it might not work for others.

Back to the first line. If you have to pay for the paper you use, there'll be a lot less wasted. And the paper I use tends to get re-used on its clean side as notepaper, and finally shredded for the worms, who like it, mixed with kitchen waste and leaves.

In "Global warming and our itchy printer fingers" Tom Lucas describes rage brought on by seeing uncollected printout by the office photocopier (I assume this is a multi-function device which prints as well as photocopies).

There are some simple measures which can help reduce paper use. One is to require staff to input a code at the printer, before their document will print. Any documents left in the queue for more than an hour or so are deleted unprinted. Another technique which is to have a quota and charge for material use. Even where real money is not charged, it still changes staff behavior when they know their resource use is being tabulated and reported.

This is a topic my students address in the course "ICT Sustainability", where I teach how to use less energy and materials, through better use of technology: http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/introduction.shtml