And don't forget to mention the stock-image that most fear-mongering articles regarding this topic use. It's usually an entire image filled with plastic trash that's floating above murky-dark water. It grabs peoples' attention, but misrepresents the extent of the problem by evoking forced emotion on individuals who think that there is quite literally "a floating island/continent of plastic trash in the ocean somewhere". Sadly, a lot of environmental issues are dealt with like this, with fear mongering rather than objective and calm discussions.
The tree thing was about the space it takes to dispose of it all, not the cutting of the trees. That a few square miles of landfill will be enough for 1000 years for everybody is a laughable notion.
Also, "a few square miles of landfill"? Maybe you're talking about a different country, but the US has such an enormous amount of land with low population density, we could spend hundreds of square miles on landfill, and you know what? Landfills aren't permanent! They turn into just land. Land you could use for: a landfill. It doesn't take an ever increasing amount of landfill to deal with garbage.
Yes, we have all heard of the extreme hyperbole surrounding it, such as calling it a "continent."
>The idea that we cut thousands of acres of wood a year to make paper,
Paper has been grown a crop using fast growing, poplar-like trees for decades now. In fact, we have tens of thousands of acres of paper trees that will never be harvested because email caused the demand for paper to plummet.