The flipside of recycling is archiving, a fancy term that appeals to the packrat in all of us. Officially, archiving is the creation of safely backed up data or carefully stored paper for reference or to fulfil legal requirements.
Paper is a very poor medium for business information.
It takes up a lot of space, proves to be horribly fragile just when you need it to be durable and takes a lot of effort to cross reference and file. In addition, most documents generated today are either photocopied or printed on a laser or inkjet printer, and none of these modern documents can match the durability of old carbon ink hammered by a typewriter into bond paper. The toner generated by laser printers and photocopiers is notoriously fragile. This powdery substance is made up largely of iron oxide, commonly known to us as rust, styrene or acrylic plastic and small amounts of sand to improve its flow. The printed page that results is vulnerable to paper folding, which makes the toner crack, extremes of temperature and humidity, which cause the toner to flake off and pressure which causes the toner to stick to other paper when it is stacked.