Submitted by Liz Antanavica, Trash and Recycling Administrator
Do you ever wonder what happens to the cardboard you toss into the blue recycling cart? There is a lot of misleading information out there, so let’s set the record straight and take a journey through the recycling process to see how cardboard gets a second chance at life.
Bedford’s current Recycling Administrator, Liz Antanavica, talked with Gretchen Carey, MassRecycle President and Sustainability Manager for New England at Republic Services to ask questions about cardboard recycling. Carey also has a local connection – she was the first-ever Bedford DPW Recycling Coordinator.
Once you toss cardboard into the recycling cart at home or one of the blue dumpsters at the Recycling Center, it embarks on an adventure to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF). Republic Services, the Town’s hauling contractor, collects the cardboard and delivers it to a local MRF, operated by Waste Management, in Billerica.
At the MRF, big trucks unload all sorts of recyclables, including cardboard, into a giant sorting room. There, the cardboard is separated from other materials such as plastic and glass using special machines and skilled workers. Cardboard that is collected at the Town’s Recycling Center is already clean and sorted. This clean cardboard is pushed straight to the baler, a machine that Carey described works by “squeezing flattened boxes together to make a bale, such as hay, except with 2,000 pounds of cardboard.”
After baling, the cardboard is stacked like a big cardboard wall until there is enough to fill an 18-wheeler. The bales will then be sold to a fiber manufacturer, typically in the United States.
At the fiber manufacturer, the cardboard bales are unwrapped and shredded into tiny pieces. These pieces are mixed with water to create a pulpy mixture that is then spread out onto a large screen to remove any remaining debris.
Once clean, the pulp is pressed and dried to form thin sheets of new cardboard. Finally, these sheets are cut, folded, and glued into fresh boxes ready to be filled with all sorts of products from toys to electronics. And just like that, the cardboard has completed its journey from recycling bin to brand-new box, ready to start a new chapter in its lifecycle.
Does it really get recycled? The answer is YES! Cardboard is an especially valuable material in a secondary market. Online shopping and home delivery have surged in recent years and shows no sign of slowing down. Recycled cardboard boxes are essential to making sure new boxes can be made from old boxes instead of from trees. In fact, the Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) recently issued a report detailing significant U.S. modernization and expansion of new paper mills that utilize recycled cardboard in the manufacturing process. Those mills want your recycled cardboard boxes.
Carey stressed that recycling is a loop system that ultimately works like this: “You put something in the recycling bin, the recycler takes it out, sorts it, bales it, and then sells those bales to a manufacturer who will make a new item out of it. If you buy that item, you close the loop. But, if you don’t buy that item, the manufacturer has no reason to make the item or buy the bale of recycled material and the whole system falls apart.”
When flattening a cardboard box for recycling, recognize that you’re not just getting rid of waste – you’re contributing to a sustainable cycle that gives materials such as cardboard a chance to be reborn and reused again and again. Additionally, you have an opportunity to vote with your dollars by purchasing products made with recycled content. The next time you buy office paper for your printer, make sure the package says “made with recycled content” to strengthen domestic recycling as a whole.
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