Did you know?

Interesting facts about paper, gleaned from all over the internet.

* Paper fibers can be recycled up to seven times before the fibers become ‘strained out’.
* Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year, enough to build a 12 foot-high wall of paper from New York to California
* According to Guinness World Records, the largest sheet of handmade paper was produced by Masaki Takahashi and Kazuki Maeda in Toyama, Japan on August 19, 2009. It measured 45 feet 7 inches x 22 feet 7 inches.
* Paper was invented by the Chinese around 105 A.D.
* Paper bags were first measured by how many pounds of sugar they held. 

* Every day, U.S. papermakers recycle enough paper to fill a 15 mile long train of boxcars. (I wonder if handmade papermakers are included in these stats!)
* Many of the UK-based paper mills have closed due to the reduction in global demand and today there are more pubs in the UK called the Paper Mill than actual working mills.
* In the last 20 years, the combined usage of today's top ten paper users has increased from 92 million tons to 208 million, which is a growth of 126%. So the use of computers is not slowing the amount paper we use. Yikes!

Here's a picture of a yummy pile of my handmade papers, just for the fun of it!