A New Case for Paperboard Packaging?

I am happy to report that the country is doing a good job reusing paper and paperboard, more than any other packaging material. In fact, in 2005, these two accounted for 75 percent of all recovered packaging. Plastic containers were only 4.2 percent of the total.2

As most of us learned in grammar school, trees perform a vital service to the planet: they absorb carbon dioxide. This process is known as sequestration. If we plant more trees, more CO2 will be removed from the air. A study conducted jointly by Harvard and Indiana Universities on behalf of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change showed that “a 500-million-ton-a-year sequestration program would be very significant, offsetting approximately one-third of annual U. S. carbon emission.” The report concluded that “a domestic carbon sequestration program … ought to be included in a cost-effective portfolio of compliance strategies.”3