HK Offices Use 100mn Sheets Of Paper A Week: Study

A Hong Kong-based environmental NGO, the World Green Organisation, say its research has found that the SAR's office workers get through some 100 million sheets of paper at work every week.

Its survey of 500 office workers also found that almost 40 per cent of companies made no effort to recycle paper waste.

The group's CEO, William Yu, said office workers could make simple changes that would have a big impact on the amount of paper used.

"People can go back to their office and ask the IT people to set double-sided printing by default, or when doing photocopying, make use of the double-sided paper" Yu said. "That will reduce, at least by half, the paper consumption.

"Or they can use a handkerchief or a hand-drying machine to replace a paper towel. All of these, I would say, are very handy measures."

Yu said that as well as being wasteful, dumping paper in landfill could also generate large amounts of greenhouse gases such as methane, which has 21 times more impact on global warming than carbon dioxide.