A New Case for Paperboard Packaging?

There are some things as an advocate of paperboard packaging you would expect to hear from me—how it protects, promotes, identifies, and informs the consumer better than any other form of container; how the printing quality of the folding carton, and now in some instances the corrugated box, is unequaled; how it offers visibility, product differentiation, and style versatility in almost limitless combinations; and how it meets the challenges of distribution, freight, and maximizing shelf space. Yet, I’m hoping I can still surprise you with a few things you may not have known.

I was stunned to learn in a recent feature article from The Economist magazine focusing on the world’s seas, that on average, every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 floating pieces of plastic. And in the Pacific, there are two vast areas, possibly the size of the United States, with “tons and tons and tons of plastic swirling round and round.”1

To be fair, everyone in the industry is trying to do better. Our brothers supplying plastic containers made from PET or HDPE have redoubled their efforts to use less and recycle more. Manufacturers of plastic packaging can claim that their products are eco-friendly and more recyclable until their pipelines burst, but two things will always be true. First, there’s only so much oil left on the planet, so no matter how much petrochemical-based packaging is reused, it is not and never will be a renewable resource. Second, the United States cannot produce enough petrochemicals on its own to meet the current demand for plastic. If we want to make packaging from polyethylene and PVC, we’re going to have to continue to import the oil to refine and convert it. As President Obama observed in his inaugural address, “The ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.” The same is true of packaging.

On the other hand, did you know that the American forest products industry plants an average of 1,700,000 trees a day? That’s five trees for every one harvested. To us, trees are a managed crop. “How many trees were used to make this paper,” is a fundamentally poor question. No one is asking “how many potatoes did you dig up to make those french fries?” or “how many cotton plants did you cut down to make that shirt?” When you think paper and paperboard, think renewable, recoverable, and recyclable. Our forests are large enough and managed well enough to provide, indefinitely, the raw materials required for paperboard packaging. Paperboard embodies not only the essence and meaning of sustainability, but of self-reliance as well. And because virgin paperboard may be repulped and recycled over and over again into new grades of paperboard, the original “tree” that started the packaging cycle is virtually immortal.

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

One more question we need to ask and answer is: What has the bigger carbon footprint, packaging plants using paper and paperboard, or converters making packaging from plastic? In the summer 2008 issue of MediaPack, a publication linking the optical media industry with suppliers of packaging, Matti Koski, director of Stora Enso (the integrated paper, packaging, and forest products company) says the company has been researching this question for the last 10 years. Koski reports that the emissions necessary to manufacture the company’s own paperboard sleeve design for CD packaging are 10 percent of the footprint required for producing the standard jewel case. In addition, pulp mills are energy-producing, not energy-consuming. Whatever isn’t needed to make paper or board is converted into power. “It’s bioenergy,” Koski says. “It doesn’t use fossil fuels.”4

On all counts, the conclusions seem obvious. Increase our recycling efforts on all fronts, minimize our reliance on products that rely on foreign oil, and promote the use of recyclable, sustainable paperboard packaging—the superior solution for graphics, marketing, and distribution. pP

1. The Economist, January 3, 2009
2. Source: Franklin Associates Ltd.
3. “The cost of U. S. forest-based carbon sequestration,” January, 2005, Pew Center on Global Climate Change
4. www.mediapack-online.com/pdf/Issue_23/MP23_P27-30_Paper.pdf