Cardboard Recycling: Why do we do it?

Cardboard Recycling

Cardboard is a great material, it’s sturdy and yet lightweight, cheap to make and easy to produce. We use cardboard for nearly an endless list of products today, from playing cards to cigarette boxes and jigsaws, to the tube in the middle of our toilet paper. As a material, cardboard first saw widespread use in the early twentieth century, a trend that has continued today with almost 90% of all products being shipped in cardboard. However it didn’t actually start life off as a packaging material but was actually used for the sweat band in the top hats of Englishmen!

Cardboard recycling is a key issue as paper products, like cardboard, make over 30% of the household rubbish we throw away in the UK each year. That’s 140 boxes per person a year!

With so much cardboard in use it’s important that businesses look into cardboard recycling in order to reduce waste and the impact they make on the environment. However, as it’s nontoxic and biodegradable so can be safely disposed of and easily recycled. Or better still, whether at home or work cardboard boxes don’t just need to be used once, but can be reused again and again, therefore preventing the need to recycle them at all until they’re beyond use.

When it’s finally time for cardboard recyclng, it’s important to realise that for every tonne of cardboard recycled you prevent the destruction of about 17 trees, the filling of two cubic yards of landfill and the saving of 4100 kilowatts of energy. Better still, with cardboard recycling, it takes 24% less energy and halves the sulphur dioxide usually caused by making cardboard from raw materials. This also leads to 7000 gallons of water being saved and 79 gallons of oil, all because you chose to reuse and recycle cardboard instead of simply just throwing it away.

So why recycle cardboard? Why not?