A high school student receives an average of 250,000 pieces of paper annually. Assuming that there are about 900 students in Central Kitsap High School, that averages to about 225,000,000 pieces of paper combined. This may seem far-fetched, but considering the amount of paper used daily for assignments, quizzes, and tests, it can quickly add up.

In elementary school, the majority of students probably learned about the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. There were even assemblies about it and it was practically drilled into students heads.  “My mom is into environmental protection, so my whole family is super concerned and aware about it, but at school no,” says Kate Zabinski, a sophomore at CKHS. Her statement was echoed by many other students at CK.

While students can’t necessarily control the amount of paper they receive annually, they can control what they do with it. Reducing paper usage by using a Chromebook instead, as well as recycling and reusing papers when possible, could greatly decrease paper waste.

In the final paragraphs of this article, a forest area the size of 20 football fields will be lost for paper production use alone. In the last year, logging in the Southeastern U.S. resulted in a loss of land about the size of New Jersey, which is about 5 million acres. That amount of damage in the span of a year is disheartening, and it is only going to add up as the years progress. “I think it’s unnecessary and we should find other means of getting paper like recycled or using google docs and other words documents on the computer,” says Avery Jaques, junior at CKHS.

Deforestation can have a negative impact on the environment, the most dramatic being the loss of habitat for millions of species. 80% of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.