Boxes and the Environment - Understanding “Reusing” and “Recycling"

Rent Our Boxes
Saturday, October 02, 2010

(NOTE: After reading the following insights remember - we STILL recycle our boxes too!)

Recycling boxes is not the answer to saving the environment.  Reusing boxes, and then recycling is the answer.  Here is why….

There is a common misconception amongst some people that recycled boxes save energy and forests.  This idea is just simply not correct.  Recycled boxes DO NOT save energy nor forests or the environment really in any significant way.

Virtually all of the cardboard (corrugated) boxes manufactured around the world today are made for a "one-time-only" use.  Typical cardboard boxes lose strength in shipping and handling, and the more times they are handled or the longer the distance in they are shipped, the more “damage” is done to them.  Once a box has served its purpose by getting its contents to the destination, the box is usually tossed into the cardboard “recycling” bin, bailed up for a scrap paper merchant to collect, and then trucked off to a pulping mill by that merchant’s very large truck.  Upon arrival, the box bails are crushed, cut-up and added to hot water and chemicals so they can be chemically broken down into raw pulp for making the new paper necessary to make new boxes and packaging.

Cardboard boxes are made out of various combinations of "virgin" and "recycled" paper pulp.  More "virgin" equals more "strength" as the fibers are longer and stronger in virgin pulp than in pulp made of recycled paper.  With each time a box is recycled, the cellulose fibers break off and thus get weaker and weaker.  This is why it is necessary to add virgin pulp to this mix – simply to add more strength to the paper that ultimately boxes get manufactured from.

When a broken-down box is recycled - it goes into the "pulping" machine at the box manufacturer.  Depending on the NEXT batch of paper’s strength requirements, appropriate amounts of virgin (new) pulp is added into this process.

Uninformed conservationists say it is this "virgin" pulp that is bad for the environment as virgin pulp comes from trees that are pulped for the very first time and the loss of those trees is a contributor to greenhouse gases.  This is a very naïve understanding of the modern pulp and paper business.
“Virgin pulp" doesn't mean that ancient hardwoods or old growth trees are cut down - EVER - to make paper!  Not even in third world developing countries. 

Almost 100 percent of all trees used in papermaking are trees planted and harvested exclusively by/for paper production on tree farms throughout the world.  The balance comes from waste portions of trees that can't be used in the lumber (for construction) business.  So remember - NO "good trees" get cut down for papermaking.  It simply would be economically unfeasible to cut a forest of mahogany, or oak, or maple, or walnut, or ebony, or any hardwood trees down to make paper!  First, the price paid for “pulp” wood is far less than the prices paid for “lumber” wood.  No pulp manufacturer could afford to pay these prices demanded for hardwoods by the lumber merchants.  And there aren’t enough hardwoods in the world to supply the demand for virgin pulp needed by the paper industry.

Additionally, to turn a hardwood into a pulp would require expensive technology and subsequent additional costs to chemically reduce a hardwood into a pulp versus what is required for pulping softwood like pine.

Finally, a forester can feasibly grow four generations of softwood forests used for making pulp and paper over the same period that it would take to grow one hardwood forest.  There is simply no economic sense to the argument that papermaking destroys forests.  And, softwoods (like pine) need a far smaller footprint of land to grow 100 feet tall versus a hardwood.  So it is likely that in the same footprint as an ancient oak, 20 or 30 softwood pines could be planted, therefore giving a net gain of 80-120 softwoods in the same space and time as only one hardwood. 
The math claiming hardwoods are being cut for making pulp and paper simply does not add up.

The papermaking process begins when the paper pulp mix is run through screens and presses.  This whole process - the process of MAKING the paper (and then that paper into cardboard) is a HUGE energy consumer.  These presses are as long as a football field and to make cardboard, the paper gets glued to other paper a third paper (corrugated flutes) sandwiched in between to make the cardboard.  The paper to make corrugated boxes goes through these presses (or ones like them) another 2-3 times and the very large rolls of raw cardboard are wrapped, banded and stored for future conversion into boxes.

To make the boxes, this "raw cardboard" has to be cut to appropriate sizes, and then scored to punch out the box blanks - and these machines are huge again and thus also very large consumers of energy.

The box blanks have to be run through printing presses (again - very large machines) to have their respective labels and product identification is printed on the outsides of the boxes.  Again, this printing process consumes more energy and these printing presses are very, very large in order to print indicia on large boxes.

Finally, the box blank’s seams get glued where necessary; and they get stacked and shipped to the end user for packaging their respective products into.  Then the whole process begins again once those products arrive at their customer’s door and get unpacked of what was inside of them.

One cannot forget the energy and handling to get all those recycled boxes back to the pulping plant to start this whole process over.

The only way to have a positive impact on reducing the energy costs of box manufacturing is to reduce the number of times that a single box gets recycled.  To achieve that, one needs to build a stronger box at the outset, and then re-use that same box as many times as possible. 
Only when that stronger box has served it useful life, then it should be recycled.

The only way to save money and be responsible to the environment is to NOT rely solely on recycling of cardboard boxes, but first to rely on re-using 3 or 4 times BEFORE recycling!

Each time we can save a box from being recycled - that is one less box consuming all that energy to molecularly destroy it, only to remake it into another “one-time-use” box again.

Rent Our Boxes LLC is the pioneer of this new thinking in North America.  In a short period of time we’ve already spread operations from the Greater Boston Metropolitan area all the way down the East Coast to Central and Southern Florida.  We serve the New York - New Jersey – Eastern Pennsylvania markets.  We are serving the Washington DC – Baltimore markets and south into the Charlotte, North Carolina markets. We are reaching into Minnesota, Ohio, and Arkansas now as well. 

Every Rent Our Boxes “regional hub” is a locally owned and locally operated business.  Each of these independent family owned businesses are networked through the Rent Your Boxes Buyer’s Cooperative, which allows us to control the quality of the products we provide to our markets, at the best possible prices to the consumer.

We’re a great business story and we’re each proud to be serving a tremendous market by fulfilling such a great need!

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