With booming e-commerce, online shopping, and increased shipping needs, one must ask the question – where do the boxes go? Thankfully, corrugated boxes and cartons make for easy recycling if they’re kept clean and dry and safe from contaminants (oil, grease). Did you know corrugated boxes can be recycled 5-7 times which is a great advantage for paper mills and businesses? This allows companies to become sustainable and Atlantic Packaging is at the forefront of this change.
In order to continue down the path of sustainability, it is not only important to buy products that are sustainably manufactured, but it is also equally important to lay emphasis on disposal and recycle of corrugated boxes post usage. By recycling corrugated boxes, it helps manage solid waste disposal by allowing companies like Atlantic to reuse Old Corrugated Containers (OCC) also known as recovered materials, which can also help become a resource for paper mills and for manufacturing new boxes out of the waste material. As of 2015, 92.9% of corrugated boxes were reused for recycling making corrugated boxes the most efficient and most used material for reuse.
The Resounding Success of Recycling Corrugated Boxes
According to EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), there was a generation of 67 million tons of paper and paperboard and 65.9% of it was recycled. This is an impressive rate of recycling for OCC. We’ll help you understand how recycling corrugated boxes the right way for businesses can help you leave a greener footprint for our planet.
Collection & Storage
Depending on the volume and size of your business, you should store boxes in a warehouse/ storeroom or a back room. You could also look into hiring a cardboard baler on the site if you have tremendous volumes of disposable corrugated boxes. Through this baler, you can compress the boxes in a compact form allowing you smarter storage options.
Sorting
Once your boxes reach the designated recycling center, it is then sorted to remove foreign objects such as glass, plastic, metal or any material that does not belong. In order to make this cost-efficient, it is imperative recycling centers spend lesser time on sorting. This can be accomplished if businesses and residents alike sort their products before sending them off for recycling. Any contaminated boxes such as greasy food boxes should be removed.
The collection is then sorted into types of boxes – cardboard, old corrugated containers, paperboards before it moves on to the next stage of the recycling process.
Pulping
Once the boxes are successfully sorted, they are sent for pulping where all sorts of packing tape, labels, stickers are removed and it is mixed in water until it breaks down into a pulp consistency. This pulp is then compressed, dried, and mixed till it reaches the desired consistency. It is advised that you not store your corrugated boxes in a damp container or allow them to get wet. This will make transportation extremely difficult.
Sanitation and Reshaping
The pulp is then worked on with proper treatments to ensure it has the right level of water resistance and that all unnecessary moisture has been rid of the boxes. With the right water consistency, the pulp is thinned and dried over and over till it can be reshaped into large reels which can, in turn, be shaped into boxes.
Advantages of Atlantic Recycling Services
Atlantic has partnered with various businesses as not just their packaging solution provider but also provides recycling services that help us reuse discarded boxes and put them into circulation again without having to cut trees. Here are the advantages of our recycling services:
Reliability: Our collection service is reliable and on time. We make communication and collection easy for your business.
Customized Solutions: We are designed to take care of the recycling needs of businesses large or small. No matter the size of your business, we can handle it. We also pay customers for their discarded boxes in order to get our raw materials only from recyclable sources.
We’re Local: We’re present across Canada and the USA and our centers are situated sensibly so as to provide you with services without leaving a heavy carbon footprint.
Let’s aim to renew our forests. Atlantic has proudly saved 14 million trees every year by only manufacturing using recycled materials. Our boxes are 100% ecological and we are happy to help you raise your sustainability index as well by helping your business through our recycling services. Give your old boxes a new life with Atlantic!
Atlantic Packaging: The Providers of Sustainable Packaging
For large or small businesses, your packages will need to be delivered securely. Invest in corrugated boxes and cartons especially long-distance shipments. Businesses that recycle many corrugated boxes incoming into their facilities, will need bigger machines to automatically compile corrugated boxes for efficient recycling methods.
Contact us today on Atlantic Packaging. We will direct you to our specialized design team to answer any questions you may have regarding our sustainable corrugated boxes. Let us come together to form a GREENER impact on the growing environment!
