The bottom line

The myth of the paperless office; Goldman Sachs unloads Backpage.com; Mr. Quaker Oats gets a facelift; PetroChina overtakes ExxonMobil; Uproar over pink slime leads to bankruptcy

The myth of the paperless office

So much for the paperless office. The average American consumes the paper equivalent of five and a half 40-foot trees every year. Belgium, where the EU bureaucracy translates reams of documents into 23 languages, consumes a world-beating 8.5 trees per person annually.

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Goldman Sachs unloads Backpage.com

Goldman Sachs said this week that it sold its 16 percent stake in the media group that owns Backpage.com, after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that the site ran ads for sex with underage girls.

Reuters.com

Mr. Quaker Oats gets a facelift

The Quaker Oats man has gotten a makeover as part of owner PepsiCo’s efforts to reinvigorate the brand. The new look for “Larry” involves a haircut and the removal of his double chin, plus a new logo shape and color scheme. “We took about five pounds off him,” says a member of the brand’s redesign team, but left “a little sparkle in his eye.”

The Wall Street Journal

PetroChina overtakes ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil, long the world’s biggest publicly traded oil producer, has been overtaken by PetroChina, which hiked its output to 2.4 million barrels a day last year. Exxon’s output fell to 2.3 million barrels a day.

Associated Press

Uproar over pink slime leads to bankruptcy

AFA Foods, a Pennsylvania-based ground-beef processing company, filed for bankruptcy this week, saying that the uproar over the use of the meat filler dubbed “pink slime” had cut demand for its products. A competitor, Beef Products Inc., announced last week that it would temporarily suspend production at three of its plants because of consumer concerns.

Bloomberg.com

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