Paper goes in and out of our lives without us realizing just how much we consume. Create a pile containing the amount of paper we use in a year on the other hand and you start to get a picture of what that looks like. According to Mandy Aggith, a woman a woman who has worked on reducing paper waste in the UK, her travels around the world once revealed Canada as one of the biggest offenders, with 90 per cent of its output comes from the country's forests.

"...it was Canada that depressed me the most," she says. "Canada is incredibly wealthy, yet 90 per cent of its logging is from old growth forests and its pollution record is horrific. It has some of the worst cases of paper mill pollution I found. Native Americans living near the mills have nerve and skin diseases and soaring rates of cancers from the bleaches used on the pulp."

Canada is also relentless in its pursuit of profit. "Ten years ago I was one of the blockaders fighting to stop the building of logging roads into the temperate rainforest of Clayoquat Sound on Vancouver Island," she says. "It's a vital forest of giant red cedars and spruce and home to bears and wolves." After years of campaigning, a moratorium was finally set to halt the felling. "To my horror, on my return, I discovered this had been arranged to last only 10 years. I had to watch as the logging trucks drove past me and back into the forest. It was chilling."

Even though Haggith released this information last year, her tree-saving tips to help reduce paper waste are as relevant now (and will continue to be) as they were in 2008:

☆ Avoid using paper napkins in restaurants

☆ Pick and choose what you need to print and use both sides of the paper when you

☆ Make sure all paper you buy from toilet paper to computer paper is from recycled sources

☆ Reuse paper bags and shred receipts and bills and compost them

☆ Share magazines between yourself and friends and send any unwanted catalogs back to the sender

☆ Reuse envelopes and make your own cards

☆ Never check off a box that asks if you want "more information"; it's an invitation for junk mail

☆ If your office doesn't already use recycled paper, ask the person in charge of office supplies to make the switch

» The Independent