Boxes Made in Canada Are Mostly Recycled

Canada has an enviable reputation as an environmentally friendly country. The immense green spaces of Canada serve to reinforce this positive view, and there is a fair degree of truth to it. The vast majority of Canada’s electricity, for example, is produced by renewable means, including wind and water.

Recycling is also important in Canada. Studies show a steady year on year increase in the recycling of plastics. Likewise, cardboard is extensively recycled. Around 80 percent of cardboard in Canada is recycled. Much of this is used to manufacture boxes made in Canada.

In the 1980s, the only cardboard recycled in Canada were corrugated boxes, normally those used for deliveries to retail and industrial sites. Today, virtually 100 percent of the population has access to recycling centers where they can drop off cardboard. Canada was the first North American country to experiment with recycling fiber boxes in the 1990s, making Canadian fiber boxes the first to be recycled in the area. Today, there is a strong drive to totally ban cardboard boxes from landfills.

Canadian Recycled Box Production

Most of the Canadian boxes are made from recycled material. By the middle of the last decade, the total recycled content of boxes made in Canada was between 70 and 85 percent, depending on the type of box.

Today, Canadian paper mills produce their products with nearly 100 percent recycled material. In fact, Canadian paper mills still import some waste paper and cardboard from the USA to get enough raw material to keep them operating.

These boxes, then, may contain fibers originally from Canada, or the USA, originally in paper, or cardboard, all recycled, to produce new, and useful, boxes. But of course, these boxes can then be recycled again, and again.

Environmental Benefits of Boxes Made in Canada

By recycling boxes, companies are saving not just trees. It takes less energy to recycle cardboard than it does to produce new cardboard. Likewise, while it does take a lot of water to recycle cardboard, it is less than that needed to produce new material. Importantly, if recycling is done in Canada, and preferably locally, there will be large savings in transport costs, and related energy use and pollution.

Boxes made in Canada are part of a sustainable system, put in place over many years, that looks to maintain a strong Canadian packaging industry, without causing undue environmental damage.