Paper and Cardboard: Delivering a More Sustainable Tomorrow

As a time-crunched father of four children ages 8 and under, Nathan Freeburg buys a lot of stuff online. That was true before the pandemic turned things upside down, and it’s even more true today, says the Portland, Oregon consultant.

“I'm ordering something just about every day,” he says. “In fact, with the exception of things we need immediately for some reason, I can’t think of anything we don’t order online.”

For consumers like Freeburg, the convenience of buying online—in his family’s case, everything from groceries and clothing to dining room chairs and a new gas grill—stopped feeling like an indulgence a long time ago. Now, it’s simply how they shop. And for many of them, there’s no going back.

“I have no desire to ever go shopping in a store again,” Freeburg says.

A constant series of deliveries means a constant supply of packaging, of course—not just for the products themselves, but for the pouches and cartons they’re shipped in and the fill material stuffed inside to protect them en route. And for today’s environmentally conscious shoppers, the materials used for this profusion of packaging matters.

He’s not alone: Consumers in his demographic group—young, active, educated, with above-average household incomes—avoid plastics over paper by a four-to-one margin, according to research by the Paper and Packaging Board (P+PB). Given the choice when ordering online, three out of four prefer paper-based packaging and shipping, no doubt lured by the easy sustainability of corrugated and cardboard boxes, which just need to be emptied and flattened to be recycled.

While many sustainability-minded consumers are likely to choose products that come in paper or cardboard over single-use plastic, fewer may be aware of the steps that industry leaders in the United States are quietly taking today to ensure a healthy future. Paper companies are part of the forest products industry, which grows about twice the volume that is used annually. 

“We actually have more forested acreage than we had in the ‘70s,” says Lisa Bauer-Lotto, Corporate Director, Environmental and Sustainability, for Green Bay Packaging. The third-generation family-owned company based in Wisconsin owns almost 250,000 acres of timberland and plants about 5 million trees annually.

“When you buy paper, you are promoting growing trees,” Bauer-Lotto says. “It’s renewable, regenerative.” In fact, more than half of U.S. forestlands are privately owned and carefully managed by about 11 million forest owners who supply 90% of the wood to make forest products. A healthy marketplace for forest products encourages private forest owners to grow more trees to help meet that demand.

Beyond being good stewards of their own forests, Green Bay Packaging also helps small tree farm owners—many of whom have fewer than 200 acres—to grow trees in a sustainable way. “We are a big forestry advocate,” says Bauer-Lotto. “That’s something we take pride in.”

If paper and cardboard packaging has one big advantage over plastic, industry leaders say, it is its sheer recyclability—another benefit that many consumers may not fully appreciate. Part of the challenge lies in teaching consumers the distinction between being recyclable in theory and in practice; many plastic cups, trays and clamshells ultimately wind up in landfills, even if they’re stamped with a number and a “chasing arrows” triangle.

“Are plastics recyclable?” says Jackie D’Ambrosio, Senior Manager of New Product Development – Omnichannel at Atlanta-based Graphic Packaging International. “Yes, but with nuances. There are frequently disclaimers: ‘Check with your municipality to make sure something actually is recyclable,’ and many people don’t understand what those numbers stamped inside the chasing arrows mean. It’s confusing.”

As a result, many plastic items are tossed in the trash, either by the consumer or at the local recycling center, where workers pull and discard them.

“When you want something that you can take at face value and just put in the recycling bin,” D’Ambrosio says, “more often than not, paperboard will fit that bill.”

Unsurprisingly, the recycling rate for paper and cardboard is high. According to the American Forest & Paper Association, 65.7% of paper consumed in the United States was recycled in 2020—a rate that has remained consistently high for over a decade. The three-year average recycling rate for corrugated containers like shipping boxes was 92.4%.

This industry-wide success in keeping paper products out of landfills is more than a source of pride—it also speaks to a mindset that informs much of the sector’s operations. At Green Bay Packaging, for example, their newly opened mill takes sustainability to a whole new level, one that transcends the packaging itself.

“We invested more than $500 million to have some of the most sustainable manufacturing of fiber packaging for shipping containers,” Bauer-Lotto says. The facility has a circular water system that reclaims wastewater from the municipality, significantly reducing the need to draw freshwater from the watershed. The new mill even recycles heat. GBP’s high use of the biofuel it consumes is green, as well—about 60% of the onsite energy across the company’s mills is renewable.

Not content with the status quo, companies like Graphic Packaging International are also working to bring these benefits to other products, says D’Ambrosio.

“We have a whole platform of plastic alternative or plastic replacement initiatives, from replacing the plastic trays that hold, say, small tomatoes, with a paperboard structure, or replacing big, heavy, poly woven bags for dog food and putting those into a paper-based structure that can be recycled.”

In the end, it all comes back to that one word.

“Sustainability,” says D’Ambrosio, “is a driving force for us.”

To learn more about how you can be a force for nature, visit PaperForNature.com