Wikipedia Burns Trees

How much paper would it take to print out Wikipedia? Or let me rephrase that: how many forests would it take to print Wikipedia?



I may be working in IT, but still I prefer to spend my free time away from computers. Just relax. Read a book. Watch TV. Go to the movies. Play with the kids. Often I look things up in an encyclopedia. As I'm sitting in the living room I don't want to go upstairs, switch on my computer and go to some website to get my information from (let alone unreliable information), I want to be able to reach out and get a encyclopedia volume from a shelf. The only way I would consider using Wikipedia (this is purely hypothetical) is when it would come in a printed edition.

Someone calculated Wikipedia printed would be at the very least 750 volumes. That's right. Wouldn't that be a waste of paper. It would take a forest to produce a printed Wikipedia. So nobody does, meaning, Wikipedia is pointless for normal people like me: it's unreliable and requires a computer at all times.