Strong, sturdy cartons come in many different sizes and are great for freight forwarding to your customers. They are an affordable option if you want to go sustainable in your supply chain.
There are wholesale businesses that sell a line of sturdy secondhand boxes as a cheaper alternative to buying brand new cartons. They are sold mostly for house moving, but there are unbranded secondhand boxes that can be used for freight. It’s worth Googling ‘recycled boxes’ in your local area to locate a distributor near you.
Some Interesting facts about paper and cardboard
Planet Ark
- Paper can be recycled up to eight times – each time the fibres become weaker
- Cardboard and paper that has reached its recycling limit can be composted
- Paper and cardboard can get recycled into toilet paper, egg cartons and packaging
- Since the fibre in cardboard has already been processed, it is one of the easiest materials to recycle
- Five million tonnes of paper and cardboard are used yearly in Australia
- Throwing cardboard into the landfill causes it to emit methane into the atmosphere
- 90% less water, 50% less energy and 90% fewer chemicals are used in the recycling process than when manufactured from trees
- And the most obvious is recycling paper and cardboard leaves trees to grow in the ground and soak up carbon from the atmosphere
Packaging companies
Packaging manufacturers want to help their customers develop sustainable packing practices with boxes made from recycled materials. The results can be amazing with die-cut boxes that can be custom shaped and branded. Innovative use of recycled boxes can be part of your branding strategy. Customers will appreciate the extra mile you take to reduce and reuse and enable them to recycle your packaging.
Repurposed cardboard boxes
Recycled boxes are part of a new trend in postage and freight void fill. With the use of portable machines, used cardboard boxes can be diverted from landfill and put through a shredder to create inexpensive, sustainable packaging such as void fill and die-cut cardboard alternatives to bubble wrap. Shredded cardboard chips replace Styrofoam packing peanuts and plastic air cushions.
These cardboard shredding machines can also press patterns into cardboard from recycled boxes to make it more flexible and convert it into sustainable wrapping and carton lining. When packed correctly your fragile items will be well protected due to its high shock absorption properties.
EcoShred Packaging Shredder
Our Pacmasta EcoShred Packaging Shredder will save your waste cardboard from going into landfill and save you money by recycling your used cardboard into flexible die-cut wrapping and lining material. You can forget about space-consuming bubble wrap and packing peanuts and make your own environmentally friendly packaging. The EcoShred is a quiet machine with safety features and plugs into a 10-amp socket.
Recycling cardboard boxes
If your boxes have reached the end of their usefulness and you can’t reuse them for another purpose then recycling is very important. If you have large amounts of cardboard, it should be compacted and baled for collection by a recycling company. Some waste collection companies provide cardboard collection wheelie bins for businesses that produce small amounts or a cage for medium amounts to be collected.
Cardboard for recycling should be kept clean and free of grease, food and other contaminants otherwise it can be composted.
