Holiday shoppers, Santa’s helpers, moms and dads, good little girls and boys everywhere will find themselves surrounded by the remnants of an unwrapping extravaganza this holiday season, as in all the years before. Box makers though, are hoping that in the aftermath of all that merriment, when stuffing the gift wrap into bags and toting empty boxes out to the garage, families will remember to set aside the corrugated for recycling.
Corrugated boxes are sturdy shipping containers. They’ve been used to safely transport products to stores and homes year-round for over 100 years. Families doing more of their holiday shopping online means more corrugated boxes are coming into their homes than ever. The good news is that those boxes are reusable as storage and shipping containers and easily recyclable. In fact, corrugated box manufacturers need the old corrugated containers to make new boxes.
Corrugated is easily identified by the wavy layer (flutes) in the middle, between two sheets of paper (usually brown). Many recycling programs accept corrugated for recycling in their curbside and drop-off collections. They typically ask residents to flatten the boxes before setting them out at the curb or tossing them into collection bins at drop-off centers.
For information about recycling corrugated, visit http://www.corrugated.org.
