Many businesses are discovering that they can reduce disposal costs, save paper costs, earn money, and preserve our natural resources by reducing, reusing, and recycling office paper. Paper is probably the biggest source of waste in most offices and usage is rising by around 20% every year, with the average office worker using approximately 50 sheets of paper every day in the typical office. That is aside from other paper waste such as newspapers and magazines that they may read.

Nakabayashi, a Japanese manufacturer of bookbinding services, paper/office products, and environmentally-friendly products has introduced a machine that turns office waste into toilet paper… on the spot.
The production rate is about two rolls per hour. Each roll requires about 900 sheets of A4-sized paper. Distribution of the 1,300 pound, $95K machine is set to commence in August with a sales goal of 60 units the first year. Clearly, given the energy to create such a machine, this is not an efficient use of resources, but the concept may have merit as it is refined.

Distribution in Japan begins in August and Nakabayashi wants to sell 60 units in the first year. Good luck with that, as each machine comes with a price tag of $95,000. Unfortunately, there is no information on operating costs yet, but I can’t imagine these being in proportion.

Some staggering facts about paper usage are:

• Paper manufacturing is the largest industrial user of water per pound of finished product.
• The USA uses 25% of the world's paper products.
• The average American uses more than 748 pounds of paper per year.
•  he USA uses approx. 68 million trees each year to produce 17 billion catalogues and 65 billion pieces of direct mail.
• The American Forest and Paper Association estimates that paper consumption will rise by50% by 2010.
• 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers.
• 700 pounds of paper are consumed by the average American each year.