Paper plays an extremely important role in human daily life. No one could ever imagine what would happen without the presence of paper. In 2018, around 422 million metric tons of paper were consumed globally. In the future, the amount of paper people consume is expected to grow steadily, reaching approximately 461 million metric tons in 2030. Paper are made from trees, which means that mammoth amount of trees will be cut off. Loss of trees will cause many environmental issues such as climate change, flooding, increased greenhouse gases and a host of problems for indigenous people.
While doing a geography project around school, part of our iGEM teams had discovered that there were many papers that had only been used one one-side and was thrown away into the recycle box. However, it is a really long process to recycle paper and it is also a burden for school to purchase paper from time to time. In a larger perspective, recycle paper can also provide environmental issues from happening. After doing the pre-experiment, we found out that recycled paper doesn’t not have a smooth surface and the recycling process needs to be more environmental-friendly as well.
Based on these two problems, we are considering that whether we can use synthetic biology to enhance the quality of recycled paper.
Source:https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089078/demand-paper-globally-until-2030/
Image:https://blog.manetmobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/book-collection-education-159751-1.jpg
Image:https://www.controlnroll.com/what-happens-to-paper-after-it-is-put-into-the-recycle-bin/