We learned too late that it is possible to use the output of papermills as high value bio based feed stocks for other parts of the global supply chain.
China is the largest paper consumer in the world (100mm metric tons), followed not far behind by the US(70mm metric tons). Japan is 3rd at 25mm.. That seems to suggest we have a lot of room for reduction.
Japan isn't really a society I see as absurdly wasteful. So we're using maybe 10% more paper per capita? Less paper per GDP.
They also seem to absolutely love everything stationery.
But I have the same issue with buying starbursts, hi-chew, jolly ranchers... I only buy candy if it's not individually wrapped. I just can't.
Edit: Oh. And the people to staff them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-24/paper-sho...
> Skyrocketing demand for boxes and packing materials during the pandemic has slashed paper production across North America, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for retail companies.
> ...
> With some mills converting to cardboard to meet the spike in e-commerce deliveries and others shutting down altogether, more than 2.5 million metric tons of North American printing and writing paper capacity—or nearly one-fifth of 2019 levels—has come offline since the start of last year. That’s according to Kevin Mason, managing director for ERA Forest Products Research, a financial research company that specializes in paper and forest products. Normally, printers would look abroad for supply but soaring logistics costs and other markets’ own booming packaging demand have limited that option. U.S. imports of paper and paperboard by volume fell 9.7% last year. Now supplies of certain grades are so tight that some commercial printers can’t get the paper they want “at any price,” Mason said.
------
Edit: I'm pretty sure this is the article I originally read about this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/business/cardboard.html
> It was Sept. 21, 2017, and the paper mill that had employed Mr. Strick, his father and his grandfather was shutting down after 128 years. Demand for the glossy white paper that the mill produced for brochures was plummeting as advertising continued its flight to the internet...
> Then something unexpected happened: Amazon and China, two forces that are often blamed for destroying American employment in retail and manufacturing, helped Mr. Strick get his job back.
> “No one is shocked when a paper mill closes anymore,” said Kyle Putzstuck, the president of Midwest Paper Group, which bought the Combined Locks mill soon after it was shuttered. “The shocking thing is when one reopens.”
> The reason for the revival has to do with the millions of packages that Amazon and other online retailers ship around the world — specifically, the humble cardboard used to construct them. Over the past five years, e-commerce has fueled demand for billions more square feet of cardboard....
> The mill’s new owners, who called themselves Midwest Paper Group, eventually agreed that it should be in operation. Across the country, failed white paper mills were being converted to brown to feed the cardboard-box boom, and Midwest followed suit.
It's hard to resurrect industries that have closed shop. The staff (without whose experience you can't make it work anyway) will have left towards retirement, other employment or have migrated away entirely, the supplier relationships need time to re-establish (particularly if the industry in question was the sole or biggest client), and often enough at least the equipment and sometimes even the buildings / real estate will have been sold away to the cheapest bidder (aka, China).
And everyone knows that the crunch will be sort of temporary, so why go through the trouble of dealing with all of the above when there are no guarantees that the government or someone else will keep the investment above water once the crunch passes?
Not by much, because the industry that remains has to get new machines, train new workers and re-establish/expand supply lines... and particularly the logistics problem is going to be hard to solve. Truck drivers are in demand but few are willing to enter an industry that's doomed to be replaced by autonomous trucks and rail.
Prices have started to drop but I would hardly say we "got through" the shortage. Just last week I was talking to the owner of a lumber yard asking when cedar would be readily available again, and he was skeptical that it ever would be in steady supply again. He mentioned looking to get out of the industry since he wasn't too sure it had much of a future left for him.
Hopefully he's wrong, but I'll remain skeptical of a return of the lumber industry to what it was.