It seems an appropriate question to ask on National Arbor Day but not sure how it relates to personal finance, but what the heck it is Friday!

Answer (from Marketplace.org with 44 second audio too): 136 billion pieces of 8X11 inch paper

Details here:

This story falls firmly in the categories of A: People having too much time on their hands and B: Stuff that’s kind of interesting nonetheless. Students at the University of Leicester over in the U.K. have figured out how much paper it would take to print the Internet. The whole Internet. They started by figuring out what it would take to print Wikipedia. Turns out? Almost 71 million pieces of paper. Then, using the generally accepted figure of 4.5 billion websites out there, and adjusting for font size, pictures and all that, they say it’d take 136 billion pieces of 8-by-11-inch paper to print the whole Internet.

In case you were wondering how much paper it would take to print out the NGPF curriculum, this picture tells you why we prefer transmitting bits and bytes over internet pipes to shipping nine binders via UPS  (Thanks to Andrew and his crack team of Ren and Sid for their efforts to support a NY teacher interested in our curriculum!):

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

More posts by Tim