6 ways cardboard does more harm than good

No matter where you go, cardboard is never far. 

Cardboard is one of the most widely used materials for packaging and shipping, and in the US alone, 46.5 million packages are shipped everyday. When we break it down by carrier, UPS claims to send 36.5 million packages per day and FedEx claims to ship an average of 10 million packages per day. 

While packaging can come in many forms, about 95% of packages that are shipped and delivered in the US are made of cardboard. 

That’s a lot of packages.

To clarify, that’s a lot of cardboard…

Why is cardboard so commonly used?

Cardboard is a widely used packaging material though it has both benefits and drawbacks. 

Some benefits of cardboard can look like:

• It is lightweight
• It is easy to recycle
• It can be biodegradable which can make it a more “environmentally friendly” option compared to other packaging materials such as plastic (we’ll come back to this)
• It is also a “renewable resource” since it is made from trees that can be replanted

While there is truth to the above, there are also some common misconceptions about the benefits listed above...

Some of the drawbacks of cardboard include:

• The production of cardboard requires significant amounts of energy and water
• It contributes to deforestation if not sourced sustainably
• While cardboard is recyclable, we know that not all cardboard actually gets recycled
• A lot of cardboard will end up in landfills where it can take years to decompose and will release greenhouse gasses

Overall, cardboard can do quite a bit of harm to the environment. Its environmental impact really depends on various factors such as its sourcing, production, use, and disposal. 

6 ways cardboard harms

​​While cardboard has been made so readily available to everyone, there are some major drawbacks to the economy we’ve built around cardboard.

Here are 5 ways cardboard harms the environment:

1. Landfill waste
   • When cardboard is not recycled or composted, it can contribute to landfill waste, taking up valuable space and potentially releasing harmful gasses as it decomposes.
   • Cardboard together with paper make up about 41% of solid waste streams. These really should make it to a recycling center, but they don’t always due to what else gets thrown into the same recycling bins, or because they weren’t recycled in the first place.

2. Deforestation
   • Cardboard is typically made from wood pulp, which means that producing cardboard requires cutting down trees. Deforestation can have a range of negative environmental impacts, including loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and increased carbon emissions.
   • US cities lose 36 million trees annually. While not all of this is directly related to cardboard creation, it is indirectly due to the carbon emissions that have increased over the years which can lead to more fires and other natural disasters. 
   • Since the 1600s, the US has destroyed 75% of its virgin forests. 

3. Energy consumption
   • The production of cardboard requires significant amounts of energy, including for transportation, processing, and printing. This energy consumption can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution, methane especially. Methane impacts the environment over 20 times more than carbon dioxide.

4. Water usage
   • Producing cardboard also requires large amounts of water, which can strain local water resources and contribute to water pollution if not properly treated.
   • In the United States, more than 800 million tons of cardboard (regular and corrugated) and paper are thrown away yearly. If we recycled one ton of corrugated cardboard, we could save 700 gallons of water. Even better, if cardboard wasn’t used as regularly, this number would be even better…

5. Chemical pollution
   • Some cardboard products may be treated with chemicals to make them more resistant to moisture or insects. These chemicals can potentially leach into the environment if not properly disposed of, potentially harming plants, animals, and humans.
   • Typically there are around 200 chemicals that are used in the manufacture of paper or cardboard. These chemicals can be dangerous today and when cardboard decomposes in a landfill and seeps into the environment–land, water and air.

6. Cost of using cardboard
   • While this is more indirectly focused on the environment, cardboard use in organizations is costly which takes away from the positive impact organizations can have on the environment. Money saved from ditching cardboard can be allocated to other ESG initiatives. 

What can we do?

To minimize these negative impacts, it's important to use cardboard responsibly, recycle or compost it when possible, and choose alternatives when appropriate. 

What do you do today to minimize the negative impacts of cardboard?

A popular alternative to replace cardboard is reusable packaging. To learn more about LimeLoop’s Smart Reusable Packaging Platform, click here.

8 key takeaways I learned from retailers about "recycling" cardboard

I’ve spent the last 5 years of my life working to eliminate single-use packaging. Cutting the use of cardboard was part of that goal, but most of my focus was on cutting single-use plastic packaging used in direct to consumer e-commerce shipments. This was true for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is that eliminating plastic gets all the headlines and regulatory attention when it comes to sustainable packaging. Cutting cardboard or “recycling” cardboard doesn’t get quite the same effect… Because plastic gets the headlines, that’s where retailers focus. And because I sell to retailers, that’s where my focus was as well. 

So, you can imagine my surprise when an employee at one of Limeloop’s customers made an off-hand comment that if I was truly worried about ending single-use packaging, I should be more focused on cardboard in their supply chain–not just focused on packaging direct to consumer.. 

While I am not a fan of single-use of any sort, cardboard has always been the somewhat “ok” material. Somewhat “ok” in the sense that it still can be recycled, though that process certainly isn’t perfect. Recycling cardboard is a beast of its own… 

This employee continued with, “We’re sending 500 boxes per store per month to replenish inventory, and only using those boxes a single time. That is a lot of wasted resources: water, energy and ultimately, money. We spend over $1 per box for that single-use cardboard.” 

Small-scale, $1/box is nothing. But we aren’t talking small-scale here. 500 boxes per month at $1.25 per box would add up to $7,500 a year on cardboard that gets used once and then tossed. These may not even apply to recycled cardboard boxes though many claim they to be using recycled cardboard boxes. And these numbers are on the smaller end of that scale… Large retailers around the nation, and the globe, experience these same price pains when it comes to their shipments. Why is it that retailers are willing to pay this kind of money for a single-use transportation item?  

“Well,” this customer had said, “We don’t have any choice. Cardboard is a fact of life.”

Despite this retail employee’s insistence, I wasn’t sure I totally bought what they said. Could it really be that most retailers in the U.S. are blowing through hundreds of thousands, or millions, on single-use cardboard boxes every year just to replenish their shelves? 

To find out, I decided to go undercover one afternoon in early November to visit 10 retailers who had sterling sustainability reputations. 

Behind closed doors

My skepticism didn’t last long.

First stop…

I started with a California based retailer that had around 100 retail locations. I walked into the store on a slow, cloudy day and quickly started a conversation with their very friendly store manager. 

“How,” I eventually asked her, “do your stores get replenished?” 

I quickly learned that store replenishment happened with cardboard, that they received around 300 boxes per month, and that they recycled all their cardboard. “However,” she’d said, sensing I had thoughts about recycling, “We know recycling isn’t actually a great option compared to reusing these boxes, but what else can we do?”

Second stop…

Next I visited a retailer with several hundred retail locations that is as hip and Gen Z friendly as a brand could be. I’d barely started speaking with the very young store associate before she’d said, “don’t worry. We recycle literally everything. We’ll do anything to promote sustainability.”  

I laughed, telling her that it wasn’t recycling that I was worried about, but the act of using a resource intensive material like cardboard just once.

“Oh wow,” she’d replied, “I’ve never thought of it like that. We go through a ton of cardboard! And yea, what a waste.”

The rest of the stores…

Store after store, the story was the same. I watched employees cut otherwise brand new boxes filled with sweaters and socks. I watched them unpack the boxes and then flatten them, sending them off to be recycled or discarded.

It’s not that recycling cardboard is bad, per se, but when you realize that every flattened box represents at least 70 liters of water, or that every 100 boxes represents an entire tree, one starts to realize that the environmental cost of using cardboard is astronomically high even when it is being recycled. 

So, what did I learn? 

8 key takeaways

• Store replenishment depends on single-use cardboard boxes
• Sustainability minded store employees feel bad about single-use cardboard boxes
• Breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling is a time consuming process for store employees 
• Cardboard is expensive
• Even companies that prioritize sustainability use cardboard boxes for shipping products 
• Many products arrive in stores in a plastic bag that is placed inside the single-use cardboard it is shipped within
• Both store employees and retail sustainability team members know single-use cardboard is wasteful, but don’t feel there is an alternative
• Cutting out the use of cardboard is low hanging fruit for retailers that are looking to increase operational sustainability and efficiency

Are you wondering how you can quit cardboard? If yes, click here to schedule a call and we’ll see what can do to help you get away from using resource intensive, single-use packaging in your supply chain.