WhatTheyThink’s Going Green has joined forces with Two Sides to help address the “perceptions” that paper destroys forests, that electronic media are “greener” than print and paper, and that recycling is the solution to all environmental ills. I am really digging the PrintCity “twofer” book, Print: Seen, Lean, & Green, which offers a wealth of case studies and metrics from around the printing industry. The book goes through the entire supply chain and includes, of course, paper. In this space, we have mentioned some salient U.S. forestry statistics, but here are some Old World figures from the book: “Over the last 20 years, the forest area has expanded in all European regions and has gained 0.8 million hectares each year. Over the same period, the total growing stock of forests in Europe has increased by 8.6 billion m3.” (“Growing stock” is defined as “Volume of all living trees in a given area of forest or wooded land that have more than a certain diameter at breast height.” Why should you care? It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that increased forest biomass increases the amount of carbon that can be slurped out of the atmosphere (more properly called “sequestration”). Says Print: Seen, Lean, and Green, “Between 2005 and 2010 about 800 million tonnes of CO₂ have been removed annually from the atmosphere by photosynthesis and tree biomass growth in the European countries.” It would be a reach to attribute all of this to increased demand for paper and other forestry products, but as I have remarked in this space before, demand for these products prevents the land for being used for other things, like agriculture or real estate development, both of which involve the removing of trees. For more Two Sides facts see http://www.twosides.us/mythsandfacts.