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I 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

I 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 ago
Cardboard 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 ago
  IIRC 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 ago
    Thanks 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.
- sph 4y ago
  As a consumer, I've received parcels from smaller businesses that have been wrapped in probably 6th hand cardboard, by the look of it. I'm not complaining. Reusing is much better than recycling
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    That actually endears me to businesses doing it.
flavius29663 4y ago
I like what Costco is doing, instead of just recycling the boxes, they are left for people to carry their purchases. The boxes get another use (instead of using bags), people get free boxes, costco doesn't have to deal with the recycling. win-win-win I guess the only losing side the is recycling company of the city.
- flopsamjetsam 4y ago
  Bunnings (a hardware store in Australia) does this too. There are big cages full of empty boxes just after the checkout.
- mparlane 4y ago
  I imagine the consumers who took their products home in the free box will then recycle the box. So the recycling company gets the box anyway and not another plastic bag.
- ezconnect 4y ago
  This is normal is S. Korea, recycling company is not the losing side because they still get the cardboard from the residential area. In the apartment complex I lived in they haul a truck load of cardboard every other day.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    IT still costs more money to haul cardboard from residential areas, compared to a large commercial building.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      No, it really doesn't. Not when people live in condo buildings with hundreds of residents. Korea is not like America.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  Every supermarket in NL does this and has done for at least 20 years. IIRC the UK supermarkets are the same. In NL we also recycle most drinks bottles (you pay a small deposit on them which you get back when your return them).
tppiotrowski 4y ago
> Entire forests and enormous factories running 24/7 can barely keep up with demand > But no widely available shipping or packaging material can match cardboard’s recyclability, which hovers annually between 90 and 91 percent. This begs the question: what is cardboard being recycled into?
- fckgw 4y ago
  More cardboard. The 10% not being recycled still requires a lot of trees. Anyone who has worked retail and used the baler can attest to the sheer amount of cardboard that comes into a building, gets de-boxed and then goes right back out in the back of a semi-truck trailer. Most of the cardboard recycling isn't being done by consumers, it's done by businesses.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    Prior to cardboard, stuff was shipped in wooden crates. So, a big improvement in terms of wood required to ship something. On the other hand, it was easier to re-use the crates. On the third hand, the empty wooden crates took up a lot of space to be shipped back, which required a lot more fuel and labor to re-use them rather than recycling the cardboard. So on net, cardboard is a big positive. We may come up with a replacement for cardboard in the future that would be an even bigger positive.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > On the third hand, the empty wooden crates took up a lot of space to be shipped back, which required a lot more fuel and labor to re-use them rather than recycling the cardboard. Wooden crates also have a lot more mass than cardboard, hence would require much more energy to move.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Are adhesive labels, tape, staples, etc. effectively separated from cardboard, or do those degrade the value of the recycled material?
concordDance 4y ago
Also, if you don't reuse cardboard and instead put it in landfill then you now have a form of carbon capture!
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Until it gets wet and is decomposed to CO2 and methane. Hopefully the landfill gas is burned instead of just being released to the atmosphere.
  - sph 4y ago
    Wasn't the CO2 in the cardboard once in the atmosphere and absorbed by the tree when it was alive? So the net CO2 is the same, in the same carbon cycle. Probably the same with methane: enters the atmosphere, gets decomposed in H2O and other stuff that go back to Earth and are still part of the same cycle.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Methane does ultimately turn back to CO2, but until it does it's a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. In any case, the decomposition in the landfill aborts the carbon storage argument, as the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I don’t think this is carbon capture in the sense that most people mean: you still had to expend a lot of energy to fell the tree and process it into cardboard. Putting it somewhere where it won’t decompose will probably only prevent a tiny percentage of the carbon required to produce it. Thus the goal of cutting down fewer trees, and thus reusing and recycling.
twobitshifter 4y ago
I was part of a team that developed a business plan for reusing cardboard boxes with a collection plan. Our end plan was simple one for one reuse. There’s a company here that seems to have had some success. https://reboxcorp.com/ https://reboxcorp.com/ Corrugated cardboard is pretty incredible and strong stuff, and we also researched up-cycling cardboard into other products like furniture, picture frames, cabinets and more. As you say, most cardboard is downcycled into cereal boxes (box board.)
adrr 4y ago
What would happen if we stopped recycling cardboard? We would have to have more tree farms and we would have a decent size carbon dioxide sink assuming we bury cardboard in a landfill.

kube-system 4y ago

Cardboard 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 ago
IIRC 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 ago
  Thanks 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.

sph 4y ago
As a consumer, I've received parcels from smaller businesses that have been wrapped in probably 6th hand cardboard, by the look of it. I'm not complaining. Reusing is much better than recycling
- JohnFen 4y ago
  That actually endears me to businesses doing it.

flavius29663 4y ago

I like what Costco is doing, instead of just recycling the boxes, they are left for people to carry their purchases. The boxes get another use (instead of using bags), people get free boxes, costco doesn't have to deal with the recycling. win-win-win I guess the only losing side the is recycling company of the city.

flopsamjetsam 4y ago
Bunnings (a hardware store in Australia) does this too. There are big cages full of empty boxes just after the checkout.
mparlane 4y ago
I imagine the consumers who took their products home in the free box will then recycle the box. So the recycling company gets the box anyway and not another plastic bag.
ezconnect 4y ago
This is normal is S. Korea, recycling company is not the losing side because they still get the cardboard from the residential area. In the apartment complex I lived in they haul a truck load of cardboard every other day.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  IT still costs more money to haul cardboard from residential areas, compared to a large commercial building.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    No, it really doesn't. Not when people live in condo buildings with hundreds of residents. Korea is not like America.
radicalbyte 4y ago
Every supermarket in NL does this and has done for at least 20 years. IIRC the UK supermarkets are the same. In NL we also recycle most drinks bottles (you pay a small deposit on them which you get back when your return them).

tppiotrowski 4y ago

> Entire forests and enormous factories running 24/7 can barely keep up with demand > But no widely available shipping or packaging material can match cardboard’s recyclability, which hovers annually between 90 and 91 percent. This begs the question: what is cardboard being recycled into?

fckgw 4y ago
More cardboard. The 10% not being recycled still requires a lot of trees. Anyone who has worked retail and used the baler can attest to the sheer amount of cardboard that comes into a building, gets de-boxed and then goes right back out in the back of a semi-truck trailer. Most of the cardboard recycling isn't being done by consumers, it's done by businesses.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Prior to cardboard, stuff was shipped in wooden crates. So, a big improvement in terms of wood required to ship something. On the other hand, it was easier to re-use the crates. On the third hand, the empty wooden crates took up a lot of space to be shipped back, which required a lot more fuel and labor to re-use them rather than recycling the cardboard. So on net, cardboard is a big positive. We may come up with a replacement for cardboard in the future that would be an even bigger positive.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > On the third hand, the empty wooden crates took up a lot of space to be shipped back, which required a lot more fuel and labor to re-use them rather than recycling the cardboard. Wooden crates also have a lot more mass than cardboard, hence would require much more energy to move.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Are adhesive labels, tape, staples, etc. effectively separated from cardboard, or do those degrade the value of the recycled material?

concordDance 4y ago

Also, if you don't reuse cardboard and instead put it in landfill then you now have a form of carbon capture!

pfdietz 4y ago
Until it gets wet and is decomposed to CO2 and methane. Hopefully the landfill gas is burned instead of just being released to the atmosphere.
- sph 4y ago
  Wasn't the CO2 in the cardboard once in the atmosphere and absorbed by the tree when it was alive? So the net CO2 is the same, in the same carbon cycle. Probably the same with methane: enters the atmosphere, gets decomposed in H2O and other stuff that go back to Earth and are still part of the same cycle.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Methane does ultimately turn back to CO2, but until it does it's a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. In any case, the decomposition in the landfill aborts the carbon storage argument, as the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
woodruffw 4y ago
I don’t think this is carbon capture in the sense that most people mean: you still had to expend a lot of energy to fell the tree and process it into cardboard. Putting it somewhere where it won’t decompose will probably only prevent a tiny percentage of the carbon required to produce it. Thus the goal of cutting down fewer trees, and thus reusing and recycling.

twobitshifter 4y ago

I was part of a team that developed a business plan for reusing cardboard boxes with a collection plan. Our end plan was simple one for one reuse. There’s a company here that seems to have had some success. https://reboxcorp.com/ https://reboxcorp.com/ Corrugated cardboard is pretty incredible and strong stuff, and we also researched up-cycling cardboard into other products like furniture, picture frames, cabinets and more. As you say, most cardboard is downcycled into cereal boxes (box board.)

adrr 4y ago

What would happen if we stopped recycling cardboard? We would have to have more tree farms and we would have a decent size carbon dioxide sink assuming we bury cardboard in a landfill.