In sum, entropy has increased. In practice, of course, this would be an unfeasible task, so the burning of the paper remains an irreversible process. The same holds, for example, for the death of any living being. As the Sun emits energy into space, its entropy increases irreversibly. A plant uses a tiny fraction of this energy, and chemicals from its environment, to decrease its own entropy as it grows.
All natural processes act to maximize the entropy of a system.
As we have seen, any such system can temporarily sustain itself from the energy cast off by another system as it progresses towards its own state of maximum entropy, but ultimately the entropy of the entire ambient must irreversibly increase. References Kline, M. 1964. Mathematics in Western Culture . Oxford University Press. Sachs, M. 1988.