Why do we recycle paper? Recycling metal and some plastics makes complete sense to me. Why bury something in a landfill that you'll have to find and dig up more of later. What I don't get is why we recycle paper products, especially those created with plant matter.

My understanding is that the fossil fuels we use for energy were generated during the Carboniferous period by burying carbon rich plant matter in anoxic swamps. If we are causing climate change by reversing this effect, dumping tons of carbon back into the carbon cycle... why recycle paper, or other products created, necessarily, by pulling carbon from the atmosphere? 

Wouldn't a more beneficial method of disposing of such waste be to find a method of isolating them from the effects of weathering and keeping the carbon they contain locked up as long as possible?
Wouldn't a more beneficial method of disposing of such waste be to find a method of isolating them from the effects of weathering and keeping the carbon they contain locked up as long as possible?


You are ignoring a number of factors here.

A good deal of energy, much of it non-renewable, is needed to turn trees into paper. The trees need to be cut down (requires petroleum), transported to the saw mill (more petroleum), sawed and chipped (requires electricity), transported again (more petroleum). Once it gets to the paper mill, it needs to be pulped (requires petrochemicals, which need to be transported (requires petroleum)). The pulping process also consumes a good deal of electricity, as does the process of turning pulp into paper.

Bottom line: Paper has a positive carbon footprint.

If you send that paper to a landfill after using it, the carbon in that paper will be released to the environment, and in fairly short order. On the other hand, recycling paper bypasses a number of the steps involved in turning trees into paper. Turning paper into pulp is easy. Recycling paper reduces paper's positive carbon footprint by a significant amount.



The question specifically asks about finding a method of isolating wastes from the effects of weathering. That's not easy. Anaerobic bacteria find paper to be quite yummy. A deep ocean trench might work, but it would be better to not make paper in the first place. Growing and harvesting trash trees and then sending them into the deep would be more effective. A number of early geoengineering proposals suggested doing just that. There are big problems here, mostly unintended consequences. Deep sixing trees in deep ocean trenches is no longer viewed as a viable carbon sequestration scheme.