Global Fax Usage – How Many Fax Machines in the World & Their Environmental Impact

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How Many Faxes Are Sent Each Year

Whilst the fax machine might seem like a thing of the past to many people, you would be surprised to hear that there are still millions of them in use around the globe.  How many fax machines are there in the World?  According to our calculations at Coupon Chili we believe there to be just over forty six million still in operation.  That’s a staggering amount of paper being used which of course has both an environmental affect as well as a financial one. 

Free Infographic on Global Fax Usage

The Impact of Global Fax Usage Infographic

It doesn’t need to be that way, as there are now many different Internet Fax solutions available (for example RingCentral).  As you can see from the infographic we have produced below, it was possible for us to calculate how many fax machines are in the world, how many faxes are sent each year, as well as the environmental impact of sending a fax. 

Please feel free to share this infographic, but if you do please make sure that you credit us accordingly.  Beneath the infographic you can find out the exact numbers involved in global fax usage as well as seeing how we managed to come to these numbers and figures including links to all of our sources.

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You download the image from here.  If you do use it on your own website then please do credit us with a link to this page or our homepage.  Thank you.

How Many Fax Machines are There Globally?

The following table shows how many fax machines are in each country around the World.  In order to calculate these numbers we found out how many machines there where per head of population and were then able to extrapolate those numbers based on size of country population.

How Many Faxes Are Sent Each Year?

Once we knew how many fax machines were in each country we were then able to calculate how many faxes were sent each year – based on the assumption that each fax machine would send one fax per day as a conservative estimate.

Country Fax Machine per 1000 People Population How Many Faxes Sent a Year Total Fax Machines
         
United States 55.28 314,705,000 6,349,865,726 17,396,892
Japan 93.31 127,520,000 4,343,095,288 11,898,891
Germany 45.55 81,857,000 1,360,934,018 3,728,586
France 32.44 65,350,000 773,783,210 2,119,954
UK 25.46 62,262,000 578,594,540 1,585,191
Italy 25.45 60,849,247 565,243,868 1,548,613
Canada 24.49 34,967,800 312,571,919 856,361
Spain 14.56 46,163,116 245,329,264 672,135
Australia 29.37 22,802,044 244,439,052 669,696
China 0.44 1,347,350,000 216,384,410 592,834
Netherlands 31.43 16,751,323 192,170,340 526,494
Sweden 41.63 9,532,634 144,847,897 396,844
Brazil 1.97 193,946,886 139,457,508 382,075
Mexico 2.23 112,336,538 91,436,325 250,510
Austria 28.91 8,452,835 89,195,583 244,371
Denmark 39.23 5,587,085 80,001,191 219,181
Switzerland 24.64 8,000,001 71,948,809 197,120
Norway 36.04 5,045,500 66,371,534 181,840
Belgium 16 10,839,905 63,305,045 173,438
Finland 29.55 5,423,740 58,499,104 160,272
Saudi Arabia 5.27 28,376,355 54,583,338 149,543
Pakistan 0.8 181,128,000 52,889,376 144,902
Israel 18.22 7,928,500 52,726,904 144,457
Colombia 2.9 46,770,000 49,506,045 135,633
United Arab Emirates 16.12 8,264,070 48,624,135 133,217
Malaysia 4 29,537,000 43,124,020 118,148
Turkey 1.47 74,724,269 40,093,307 109,845
Singapore 21.08 5,183,700 39,884,425 109,272
South Africa 2.11 51,770,560 39,871,097 109,236
Ireland 23.65 4,588,252 39,606,938 108,512
Thailand 1.35 65,479,453 32,265,000 88,397
Kuwait 20.55 3,582,054 26,868,092 73,611
Czech Republic 6.68 10,507,566 25,619,547 70,191
Indonesia 0.29 237,641,326 25,154,334 68,916
New Zealand 14.03 4,444,780 22,761,496 62,360
India 0.05 1,210,193,422 22,086,030 60,510
Argentina 1.37 40,117,096 20,060,554 54,960
Hungary 4.99 9,957,731 18,136,513 49,689
Russia 0.34 143,228,300 17,774,632 48,698
Portugal 4.47 10,561,614 17,231,801 47,210
Philippines 0.51 92,337,852 17,188,691 47,092
Slovakia 7.42 5,445,324 14,747,571 40,404
Venezuela 1.32 28,946,101 13,946,231 38,209
Jordan 5.95 6,365,800 13,824,926 37,877
Poland 0.97 38,538,447 13,644,537 37,382
Ecuador 2.53 14,483,499 13,374,787 36,643
Croatia 7.08 4,290,612 11,087,800 30,378
Tunisia 2.43 10,673,800 9,467,127 25,937
Chile 1.56 16,572,475 9,436,367 25,853
Greece 2.27 10,787,690 8,938,141 24,488
Qatar 13.41 1,699,435 8,318,140 22,789
Mauritius 16.54 1,286,051 7,764,018 21,271
Syria 0.7 21,819,000 5,574,755 15,273
Morocco 0.43 32,718,800 5,135,216 14,069
Slovenia 6.65 2,061,170 5,002,975 13,707
Romania 0.71 19,042,936 4,934,977 13,520
Vietnam 0.15 87,840,000 4,809,240 13,176
Togo 1.96 6,191,155 4,429,152 12,135
Bahrain 9.71 1,234,571 4,375,505 11,988
Luxembourg 23.2 511,800 4,333,922 11,874
Sri Lanka 0.55 20,277,597 4,070,728 11,153
Guatemala 0.69 14,713,763 3,705,661 10,152
Macau 17.22 568,700 3,574,450 9,793
Bulgaria 1.32 7,364,570 3,548,250 9,721
Sudan 0.31 30,894,000 3,495,656 9,577
Peru 0.31 30,135,875 3,409,874 9,342
Uruguay 2.81 3,286,314 3,370,608 9,235
Cyprus 10.67 838,897 3,267,126 8,951
Algeria 0.2 37,100,000 2,708,300 7,420
Ghana 0.26 24,658,823 2,340,122 6,411
Estonia 4.46 1,294,236 2,106,887 5,772
Mozambique 0.21 23,700,715 1,816,660 4,977
Iceland 15.37 320,060 1,795,553 4,919
Lebanon 1.11 4,292,000 1,738,904 4,764
Kenya 0.12 38,610,097 1,691,122 4,633
Malta 11.04 417,617 1,682,829 4,610
Oman 1.54 2,773,479 1,558,973 4,271
Uganda 0.12 32,939,800 1,442,763 3,953
Zimbabwe 0.29 13,014,000 1,377,532 3,774
Ukraine 0.08 45,560,272 1,330,360 3,645
Lithuania 1.14 3,180,394 1,323,362 3,626
Mongolia 1.32 2,736,800 1,318,590 3,613
Botswana 1.73 2,024,904 1,278,626 3,503
Mauritania 0.92 3,378,254 1,134,418 3,108
Tanzania 0.07 43,188,000 1,103,453 3,023
Maldives 8.15 317,280 943,829 2,586
Cambodia 0.15 14,478,000 792,671 2,172
Brunei 5.38 393,162 772,052 2,115
Trinidad & Tobago 1.56 1,317,714 750,306 2,056
Guinea 0.18 10,824,200 711,150 1,948
Jamaica 0.65 2,709,300 642,781 1,761
Barbados 6.1 274,200 610,506 1,673
Faroe Islands 29.52 48,459 522,136 1,431
Gambia, The 0.76 1,825,000 506,255 1,387
Greenland 20.87 56,749 432,288 1,184
Benin 0.12 9,352,000 409,618 1,122
Belize 2.28 312,971 260,454 714
Niger 0.04 16,274,738 237,611 651
Latvia 0.31 2,070,371 234,262 642
Gabon 0.41 1,564,000 234,053 641
Moldova 0.12 3,559,500 155,906 427
Djibouti 0.24 818,159 71,671 196
Comoros 0.16 669,300 39,087 107
         
TOTALS     16,921,193,736 46,359,435

The Environmental Impact of Sending Faxes

When doing our calculations on global faxes sent we could not believe just how many trees were being cut down each year.  The facts are very frightening.   If one average sized tree can produce over 8,000 sheets of paper that means that over 2 million trees are being cut down each year.  To put that into perspective which is easier to visualize, that is a similar size to nearly 5,000 football fields!

Assumptions & Facts

Here are some of the assumptions and additional calculations we performed in order to product the global fax usage infographic.

  • Each fax machine sends 1 fax per day
  • 313 sheets of paper stack up to 1 inch
  • There are 63,360 inches in a mile
  • So 19,831,680 sheets of paper can be stacked 1 mile high
  • Therefore global faxes sent would equal 853 miles high
  • 1 tree can produce 8,333.3 sheets of paper
  • Therefore we use 2,030,551 trees each year when sending faxes
  • There are 75,000 trees per square kilometer
  • Therefore 2 million trees are used each year by fax machines
  • Therefore 26.6 square kilometers of trees are used (which is equal to 10.3 square miles)
  • How many football fields in a square mile = 484 fields
  • Therefore 4,840 football fields of trees are cut down each year due to faxes
  • 1 ink cartridge can print 200 pages

Sources

In order to arrive at the numbers to base our calculations on when figuring out how many fax machines there are globally, how much paper is used to send faxes, and how many faxes are sent each year, we used the following sources.

Fax Machines by Country
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_fax_mac-media-fax-machines

List of Countries by Population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

How Many Trees are Used to Make Sheets of Paper
http://conservatree.org/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml 

How Many Trees are Cut Down Every Year
http://understory.ran.org/2008/04/22/how-many-trees-are-cut-down-every-year/

How Many Football Fields Are There in 1 Square Mile
http://www.chacha.com/question/how-many-football-fields-can-fit-into-a-square-mile

Conclusion – Use Internet Fax Like RingCentral

By using Internet-based fax services such as RingCentral Fax you can lessen the environmental impact of your office as well as saving costs.  For more information on this product please read our RingCentral Fax review – we also have a page where you can find the latest RingCentral Referral Codes which will help you to save money when you sign-up to their Internet fax services.