Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff. From how Stuff Works. Hey there,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vocal bomb here. From groceries to gadgets.
Speaker 1: The home delivery of goods is depositing cardboard boxes on
Speaker 1: doorsteps across America, and we've collectively fallen in love with
Speaker 1: the convenience of it all. But what about the consequences
Speaker 1: of all that packing material. The number of e commerce
Speaker 1: transactions increased by more than fifteen percent in twenty six
Speaker 1: according to the U S Census Bureau, and the e
Speaker 1: commerce industry has doubled in the last five years to
Speaker 1: be worth three hundred and fifty billion dollars annually. It's
Speaker 1: a trend that predicts deliveries from online purchases will continue
Speaker 1: to rise, and at least for now, you'd think this
Speaker 1: probably means the use of more cardboard, but the amount
Speaker 1: of cardboard shipped by US companies has actually decreased since
Speaker 1: according to the Fiber Box Association or FBA, which is
Speaker 1: the trade group for the cardboard industry or the corrugated
Speaker 1: knockdown box material industry if you want to get fancy.
Speaker 1: FBA member businesses are responsible for of wholesale industrial shipments
Speaker 1: of new or recycled cardboard made in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that imported cardboard comprises only about
Speaker 1: three percent of the cardboard used in the US. How
Speaker 1: can cardboard production possibly be decreasing In the midst of
Speaker 1: this e commerce shipping boom, Manufacturers, including e commerce retailers,
Speaker 1: are reducing packaging in an effort to reduce costs. Some
Speaker 1: forgo cardboard for shrink rep like bottled water bound by
Speaker 1: plastic film instead of cardboard. When cardboard is used, fewer
Speaker 1: shippers are using the Russian dollar method of product transit,
Speaker 1: in which a series of smaller boxes are inside of
Speaker 1: a larger box, And because more items are being shipped
Speaker 1: directly to consumers, fewer items are being boxed and shipped
Speaker 1: to retail stores inside of larger boxes, which may help
Speaker 1: explain the FBA stance that cardboard consumption is down or
Speaker 1: at least holding steady as e commerce is up. The
Speaker 1: steady and potentially increasing use of cardboard is a boon
Speaker 1: for the cardboard manufacturing industry, but leaves many of us
Speaker 1: grappling with the long term effects of an increasingly e
Speaker 1: commerce driven economy. FBA president Dennis Coley old The New
Speaker 1: York Times in twenty sixteen that the use of e
Speaker 1: commerce boxes was growing faster than most other market segments
Speaker 1: in the paper industry. This translates into more than thirty
Speaker 1: five million tons. That's about thirty two million metric tons
Speaker 1: of container board produced in the US each year. And
Speaker 1: while some boxes are reused by the recipients, others are
Speaker 1: destined for the waistbin. But wait, don't the majority of
Speaker 1: boxes get recycled? Well, yes, but of the cardboard that
Speaker 1: is discarded each year, ten percent ends up discarded in
Speaker 1: the trash, and experts predict that number may continue to
Speaker 1: grow because cardboard recycling has hit a plateau for nearly
Speaker 1: three decades, the percentage of boxes that Americans recycle has increased.
Speaker 1: For example, in only about fifty five percent of cardboard
Speaker 1: in the US made its way into the recycling bin.
Speaker 1: By even that number had risen to but it had
Speaker 1: fallen to eight nine, a rate that held steady and,
Speaker 1: as the Pew Research Center reports, has continued to remain flat.
Speaker 1: This means that more than ten percent of consumer cardboard
Speaker 1: is thrown away each year in the units dates to
Speaker 1: the tune of about three hundred and fifty thousand tons,
Speaker 1: which is about three hundred and eighteen thousand metric tons
Speaker 1: of boxes in landfills. Making cardboard products with recycled materials
Speaker 1: uses less energy and creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions. According
Speaker 1: to the e p A inteen, the most recent year
Speaker 1: for which data is available, eighty nine million tons or
Speaker 1: about eighty one million metric tons of materials from cardboard
Speaker 1: to plastics were recycled or composted. Doing so reduced greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions and a move equivalent to eliminating the annual
Speaker 1: emissions of thirty eight million passenger cars. Unfortunately, cardboard can't
Speaker 1: be recycled indefinitely. Every time it's remade, the fibers get shorter.
Speaker 1: After five to seven recycling loops, the fibers become too
Speaker 1: short to bond together into cardboard by adding new pulp
Speaker 1: during the recycling process, any remaining usable fibers can still
Speaker 1: be incorporated into a new product, paper, for instance. In
Speaker 1: this way, a portion of every cardboard box lives on.
Speaker 1: Even so, some experts say recycling alone won't be enough
Speaker 1: to keep considerable amounts of cardboard out of the waste
Speaker 1: stream and ultimately US landfills, and with economy increasingly fueled
Speaker 1: by the immediacy of home delivery, we may have some
Speaker 1: difficult decisions to make about consumerism. And then again, study
Speaker 1: compared to the environmental impact of individual consumers who make
Speaker 1: eco friendly choices with those of consumers who don't, and
Speaker 1: found no meaningful difference between the two. Recycling cardboard still
Speaker 1: requires resources, but markedly fewer than making new cardboard. It
Speaker 1: takes less energy to make recycled cardboard than it does
Speaker 1: to create new Today's episode was written by Laurie L.
Speaker 1: Dove and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other environmental topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com