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Where does all the cardboard come from?
- neonate 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20221129012054/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/magazine/cardboard-international-paper.html https://web.archive.org/web/20221129012054/https://www.nytim...
- hammock 4y agoMy grandfather was a corrugated cardboard box salesman for Container Corp of America back in the day. A lot of the cardboard then was coming from trees in northern Maine. All that paper industry is pretty much gone now. Not because there aren't any trees left, but because it's cheaper to harvest and process wood in other places now
- ngold 4y agoI just assumed oregon. Apparently the locals tell me, the owl scare of the 80s that killed most lumber companies on west coast, was simply lobbying and scare tactics by east coast lumber companies. And it worked very well. But who knows.
- Ironlikebike 4y agoI recently read a book on managing forests "A Landowners Guide to Harvesting Your Woods" and one of the salient points in the book is the fact that the majority of woodlands in the northeast are now privately held, (relatively) small parcels, that don't get harvested for a number of reasons. 1) Scarcity messaging over the last decades have created new property owners who see tree harvest as a moral outrage. 1a) Property owners aren't managing small private woodlots for harvestable lumber. 2) Harvesting small woodlots does not offer necessary economies of scale needed by harvesting operations, i.e., they're not going to invest the time to harvest < 20 acre plots.
- shagie 4y ago> 2) Harvesting small woodlots does not offer necessary economies of scale needed by harvesting operations, i.e., they're not going to invest the time to harvest < 20 acre plots. There are small sawmills that don't operate quite in the same economies of scale that the larger ones do. They've still got challenges and your first two points are still very applicable. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/10/small-sawmill-sees-growth-amid-surging-demand-for-lumber/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/10/small-sawmill-sees-gr... https://www.marketplace.org/2022/11/07/tough-housing-market-is-pushing-this-lumber-business-to-diversify/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/11/07/tough-housing-market-... The second one is the more applicable one for this case (note: the transcript is abridged - listen to the full version). One of the things that they specialize in for small lots (home owner) is storm damage.
- bombcar 4y agoIt also depends on what the trees were planted for, around here there's lots of pulp trees that are really only used for paper, not boards. And the amount you "make" with such logging is barely enough to overcome the taxes you pay, even if the land is classified as special tax-reduced forestry land.
- halpmeh 4y agoTrees on small private lots also greatly increase the property value. A clear-cut private plot? Not worth nearly as much as the plot with the 300 year old old-growth.
- eschulz 4y agoSame in parts of the Upper Midwest. I assume land prices and labor laws/practices are among the primary causes for these shifts.
- thecrumb 4y agoMy dad worked for Mead Containers for many years. If he was reading this he would complain because technically 'cardboard' as everyone calls it is really 'corrugated'. The corrugated board is made from multiple layers of 'cardboard'.
- zinekeller 4y agoThe author hears you: > Paper people tend to scoff at the word “cardboard,” which they consider inaccurate and a little gauche. ... but yeah, it'll be probably the equivalent of "blockchain" or "AI"/"machine learning", there's a nuance that bothers some people.
- Scoundreller 4y agoOr “crypto” to mean anything other than math.
- function_seven 4y agoI use "crypto" only when talking about Big Foot or a Chupacabra.
- jspash 4y agoAs in, something a lot of people really really believe in but... the truth is scarier than fiction!
- Scoundreller 4y agoCould also be cryptosporidium. One ill child could infect a whole pool if you swallow some pool water... https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cryptosporidium%20pool%20infected https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cryptosporidium%20pool...
- rhapsodic 4y ago
- hateful 4y agoI've always wondered if, for example, Amazon, could be using reusable totes instead of cardboard. I get that they'd have to transport them back and they have weight, but they deliver regularly enough to my house that it seems doable now - maybe just for monthly things like subscribe and save.
- mter 4y agoIt's extremely time consuming to collect bags, stage bags at the fcs, and the bags have to be cleaned between uses which would negate any environmental savings.
- eropple 4y agoThey tried to do that with Amazon Fresh. Their delivery folks didn't pick up the bags when they were left out, though, even when Amazon said they would.
- dylan604 4y agoThe failure of the employee doomed the policy. There's no way to defend against that
- mixmastamyk 4y agoBut why? Recently had one of those amzn pull baskets (for small packages) left forgotten on our street. Told next delivery peeps several times, they wouldn’t take it.
- kube-system 4y agoException handling is usually a specific job in logistics, often titled 'problem solve' or similar. The people doing delivery routes only have the time/information/procedures in place to do their assigned tasks. They probably don't have the time, space, or information to determine what to do with that basket. It was someone else's job assignment.
- ilamont 4y agoI was pleasantly surprised to see the 90%+ recycle rates for cardboard, which was much higher than other materials including aluminum cans (~50%). Of course, it would be better to re-use cardboard but the nature of the material and the way people and businesses use boxes makes it difficult in most cases. For my own business, we almost never need to purchase boxes for outbound shipping because we can re-use boxes from our main supplier and inbound packages from Amazon and other sources. Regardless, we have to recycle 75% of boxes that come into the office because we don't have enough outbound shipping that matches the box size.
- kube-system 4y agoCardboard boxes get a decent amount of reuse around my house, and I'm sure many others. They're certainly better for reuse than bag/envelope style packaging. But yeah, at the scale of a large business, reuse makes no sense, because sorting and classifying them is labor intensive.
- cbhl 4y agoIIRC the boxes that Wal-mart uses internally are marked "return for reuse, each box cost an average of $1" But yeah, not so much for, say, Amazon
- ilamont 4y agoThanks for sharing that $1 cost. It's for exactly this reason that we prefer to use many USPS Priority Mail flat rate mailers/boxes because they are free. In one case requiring a special cardboard tube, we looked into getting our own tubes but the cost was close to $3 unless you wanted to buy 1000 units. So we stuck with USPS "triangular tubes" which are included in the price of a $14 flat rate postage anywhere in the U.S.
- justinator 4y ago>it would be better to re-use cardboard Having worked in a few warehouse shipping centers, most of the boxes we get ourselves, we reuse to ship out. Doesn't even matter if it originally came from our factories. Amazon box? Ship out with it. Box from some random employee's home? Ship out with it. Rarely do new boxes get used. Only boxes we recycled were damaged boxes and when we positively just don't have any place to store the cardboard.
- mahathu 4y agoHas anyone tried Audm (the company that narrates such articles)? Their product seems great for articles like these. However I don't see yet why one would pay for a service such as this over countless free high-quality podcasts.
- plusminusplus 4y agoIronically, the NYT acquired Audm
- advisedwang 4y agoThis article makes it sound like cardboard is never made from recycled material. Even hearing that 91% of cardboard gets recycled after, it was a bit shocking to me. Does anyone know more about why this is the case?
- throwaway892238 4y agoThey mentioned bamboo, and I'm surprised nobody has done this, but you could build a machine to weave extremely sturdy and reusable boxes out of bamboo fiber. They would of course be more expensive, heavier, and bulkier, but they would pay for themselves may times over in time. Reusing them could be as simple as a return center or pick-up service. As padding, you could stuff the empty space in the box with shredded bamboo. They'd be weather-resistant, tough, flexible, and stronger than steel. And growing more stock takes a fraction of the time and cost compared to trees.
- phkahler 4y agoWhat if all the bamboo grown is already used for other things? A whole new box industry would need new supply.
- hosh 4y agoBamboo is a grass, and very fast growing. Some of the running species are vigorous enough to be considered invasive outside its native ecosystem. (The running bamboos spread via rhizomes, a couple feet deep, making them extremely difficult to get rid of once established). They can grow, be harvested, and regrow again faster than many trees, even if those trees are coppiced. They also produce a woody like construction material that is more durable than some of the fast growing trees (such as balsa). Point being, growing more bamboo is easier than growing more trees in order to supply something like cardboard.
- RC_ITR 4y ago>They would of course be more expensive, heavier, and bulkier, but they would pay for themselves may times over in time The most expensive parts of any thing are almost always human labor and energy (for transportation mostly), so it is unlikely that this would be true from any holistic point of view.
- crazygringo 4y agoGenerally speaking, in today's economy reuse is a bug, not a feature. We could already reuse thick plastic packaging instead of cardboard, but we don't, because it's so much more expensive to collect, clean/sanitize, sort by 40 different sizes, and store in a warehouse. Heck, we could already reuse glass soda bottles the way they still do in many developing countries around the world, instead of recycling them to melt them down and form new bottles. But again we don't, because the cost of collecting separate streams for each brand of soda bottle is too expensive in the developed world. So while the idea of reusable bamboo packaging could be appealing, them problem is in the reuse part sadly. Much more economically efficient to produce something one-use, put it in a general recycling stream, and then re-form.
- eucryphia 4y agoYes, all pine foresters can afford to silviculturally thin their forest estates, on time, so they produce larger, more valuable sawlogs in the future. The pulplog and residues go into making cardboard to protect valuable products in their journey to customers, reducing damage and waste. And as a bonus, it reduces the mega fire risk of the forests. A win for forests and animals, a win for the customer, a win for employees, a win for investors, thank you Mr Pratt.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoOne of the best industries in the world. I deeply root for them and hope that they can defeat plastic in all of its evil forms. I already see cardboard water bottles in stores, hopefully beer etc is next. Paper is truly incredible stuff.
- kepano 4y agoInternational Paper (the company profiled in this article) and most of the box manufacturers in the US use the software company I started, Lumi (YC W15)[0]. What is fascinating about these manufacturers is that many of them have been in business for more than 100 years and think on a multi-generational time scale. Managing forests and growing trees to turn them into boxes is a 25 year process. There are a lot of old-timers working in these companies but I really enjoyed working with them. It's like we were the Hobbits interacting with Ents. They make decisions in a different way, and I found that refreshing. As a fast-moving startup it forced us to be aligned with their long term view of the world. [0] https://www.lumi.com/ https://www.lumi.com/
- lagt_t 4y agoInternational Paper uses SAP for supply chain management.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- therockspush 4y agoLumi lad, any idea what part of the supply chain Int Paper uses you for when not using SAP?
- kepano 4y agoDifferent part of the business. IP is big :) They use Lumi as a storefront and customer management platform primarily for the ecommerce market.
- pfdietz 4y agoLong term, when fossil fuels are done, things like cardboard will be viewed as valuable resources of reduced carbon, for conversion to things that are currently petrochemicals. Plastic feedstocks, jet fuel, other chemicals.
- emptybottle 4y agoI wish we could simply return cardboard boxes to e.g. amazon (who drives every neighborhood daily) and check a box “I prefer recycled boxes” to signal that you don’t mind using a second hand box for your delivery.
- ct0 4y agoYou may be receiving second hand boxes already. When I ship products out, it's generally in a clean Amazon box. No one has complained yet.