A graduating student on average needs to print seven copies of his or her thesis, and with 7.27 million students graduating this year, at least 70,000 20-year-old trees will have to be cut to produce a thesis paper, the Legal Evening News reported.

One graduating student, Advertising Major, Kong Qiang, said he edited his thesis three times and printed three copies each time. During the first printing, Kong's supervisor modified a huge portion of the content thus he reprinted the thesis with the corrections.

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Again, the supervisor looked at Kong's thesis and edited it for typos, punctuation and formatting, things that can be done through the computer, but Kong said he had to reprint the documents upon the instruction of the supervisor.

It took three reprints before the thesis was approved for submission.

"Before the examination, I have to print three copies for three teachers for approval. During the examination, I also have to give one copy to each judge teacher," Kong said, adding that he will need to print another copy for school filing after the examination.

"It is a waste to use so much paper," Kong said. "What a pity. It is neither cheap nor environmentally friendly."

The reporter interviewed students from more than 10 universities in Beijing, Tianjin, Henan and Shanxi and found out that a thesis has to be reproduced on average seven times from first draft to final version.

According to graduating students, a 2,000-word, two-sided thesis needs 20 pieces of A4 paper.

The number of this year's graduate students is 7,270,000, based on the data released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. That means 145,000,000 pieces of paper will be wasted this school year, the report said.

Li Shijie from Henan Biyun Paper Company said that a bond paper basically uses original wood pulp for good quality. With an example of a hardwood pulp, making one ton of paper needs 3.5 tons of hardwood pulp, which is around 188 meters high with a diameter of 15 centimeters.

"It takes 20 years to grow trees that big," said Li.

With that said, over 70,000 20-year-old trees will be cut for this year's thesis.