The Life Cycle of Paper at Warren Wilson College

Forest

8,335 sheets of paper come from one tree
WWC uses 240 trees/year in paper (Not including paper towels, mail, etc.)
It would take about 1.5 years to consume 1 acre of the WWC Forest via our total paper use.

INPUTS

Paper Mills

Warren Wilson College Supplies most of its printer/copier paper from two major paper companies.

Domtar Paper

Domtar owns and operates pulp mills in the United States and Canada
Pulp then shipped from the pulp mill to one of ten paper mills.
Then paper must be shipped to the replenishment center in Charlotte, NC before it is shipped to WWC.
Paper travels about 400-1,000 miles to get to Warren Wilson College.
Has published a sustainable growth report.
3/4 of the energy used at Domtar mills comes from renewable sources.
Has cut greenhouse gas emissions from continuing operations by 32% percent since 1990.

Wausau Paper

90,000 acres of timberland in northern Wisconsin (Pulp mills may or may not be in Wisconsin).
Paper mills in Michigan and Wisconsin
Distribution Centers in:

Illinois
Pennsylvania
California
Texas

Paper travels 1,000+ miles to reach WWC
FSC Certified
Green Seal Certified
Has published an environmental policy

Mail

Information about the input of mail into campus is unknown.
Investigation into the issue is currently underway.

Commercial Printing

Daniel’s Graphics is the main company that Warren Wilson College uses to print its Commercial Printing.
The numbers for the 2009-2010 Campus Department Purchases are shown below:

Admissions – 116,500 sheets (100% Post Consumer Content)
Advancement – 74,395 sheets (between 30% and 100%)
ELC – 15,700 sheets (100%)
Owl and Spade – 56,400 sheets (100%)
Math – 550 sheets (100%)
Swannanoa Gathering– 78,900 sheets (Unknown right now)
Miscellaneous – 850 sheets (100%)

THE OWL – Warren Wilson College

Office Paper

Print Shop

The print shop purchases approximately 2 million sheets of printer/copier paper annually. That paper stacked up could be taller than the Washington Monument and is equal to 22,000 lbs of paper!
That paper ranges in percentage of recycled content but generally the paper is around 35-55% recycled.
Most campus departments purchase their paper through the print shop.

Rogue Campus Departments

Some Departments may buy their paper independently. Investigation on finding those departments and unknown inputs into the Warren Wilson College paper stream is currently underway. For example, the Chapel and MFA do not purchase paper through the Print Shop and their printing purchases and numbers are generally unknown.

Bannerman

Purchases approximately 200,000 sheets of paper annually.
In the past, paper had been 30% recycled. Currently in the transition to 100%.

Paper Towels

310 rolls purchased in the 2009-2010 year.
Each roll of Paper Towels = (8”x800’)
Supplied by Wausau.
100% recycled (82% PC)

Mail

Information about the input of mail into campus is unknown.
Investigation into the issue is currently underway.
However, we can separate our mail into two types:

Not Junk – mail that is important and generally necessary.
Junk – unnecessary and unwanted mail that could be avoided by unsubscribing to mailing lists.

Publications

Publications are mostly printed at an off campus professional printer, such as Daniel’s Graphics, and then sent out to the community in order to publicize for Warren Wilson College.

CAMPUS USE

Paper is used on-campus by faculty, staff, and students in support of education. A paper reduction task force has been established on campus to reduce use.

WASTE STREAM

Recycled

Total Paper Recycled: 30,801 lbs/year*

Landfill

Total Paper Trashed: 11,375 lbs/year*

* Quote from recycling: “During a normal month, we recycle 6,000-8,000 lbs of paper, so these numbers seem low.”