by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
In the United States alone, over 90% of all products are shipped in a cardboard box and 120 million tons of cardboard are used each year. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that the US commercial sector generates more corrugated cardboard than any other single material. If all North American companies and consumers disposed of their cardboard by “dumping”, the resulting 457 billion square feet of trash could blanket the states of Massachusetts and New Jersey, or cover 9.5 million football, as in American football, fields!
A company called “Used Cardboard Boxes” makes, I am sure, a significant environmental impact by collecting usable, quality boxes from businesses that would otherwise discard them. The company then certifies, brands, and re-sells the very same boxes to the 43 million Americans who move each year as well as small businesses throughout the country as a low-cost, earth-friendly alternative to new boxes.
Product is ordered online or at 1-888-BOXES88 and then delivered to the consumer the next day.
Here is, I am sure, also a business opportunity for people in other countries, in the same way as there is a business opportunity in shredded paper for animal bedding and/or packaging material. In the latter case to replace bubble wrap and Styrofoam beans or such. This shredded paper would have the same effect as the old wood shavings of old. I am sure some of us still remember breakable goods that came packaged in shavings gathered from carpentry workshops and the like.
Next to disposable diapers cardboard and office paper accounts to, so I understand, the greatest amount of waste going into landfill sites. This, together with the cardboard that we generate simply by buying goods that are packed in cardboard boxes, the waste mountain is humongous.
If I understand it correct a great amount of domestic waste is just cardboard and paper and even more waste like that is generated by offices and businesses. If, from the beginning, the boxes that products come in would be designed with the second life in mind, much like that plastic box packaging that I have seen for some media center which becomes then storage unit and shelf set up for the center and the CDs, DVD, etc., we would go a very long way towards reducing the amount of cardboard that gets thrown away. Cardboard constructions can be very strong and I have seen display shelving recently on a show that was made of cardboard and just slotted together in the IKEA fashion. This could also be done with boxes, that is to say they could have cut outs designed in to make small items of shelving or such.
On a practical recycling sense this can be done at home or in the office. Not the building of shelving with them boxes but a reuse can be found for them, I am sure; or at least for many of them.
There are a number of little examples that I could cite of my own in which small cardboard packaging boxes have been “re-engineered” into boxes & trays for the desk. Often one just has to think laterally. Then again, that is something that I am rather known for.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Reusing Cardboard Boxes
