Recycling Process

Corrugated is a highly useful, cost-efficient, versatile packaging material that is used to ship just about every product under the sun, all around the world.  Corrugated boxes are often reused many times in homes and businesses to organize, store and move toys, household items, files and all of our assorted "stuff." But it doesn't stop there: corrugated is also the most-recycled packaging material on earth, with a recovery rate over 78 percent.

Businesses, retailers and consumers at home collect and return their used corrugated containers to be recycled into new ones.  While almost everyone contributes to corrugated's recycling success, fewer people may know where those boxes go from the collection point, or how they are processed to produce new corrugated material.

Here's how corrugated is recycled:

(Click HERE to download a diagram)

1. Corrugated boxes are used for their intended purpose of product protection and transportation.
   
   
2. Clean, old corrugated containers (OCC) are collected, in many instances as part of a mixed recyclables stream.  To optimize recyclability, containers should be free of contaminants such as food, metal foil, wax, etc.
   
   
3. The collected OCC is sorted, compacted and baled for space-efficient storage and handling, either at the point of end-use (store or business) or at the recycling center.
   
   
4. Bales are transported to the paper mill.
   
   
5. Bales are broken open, and OCC is put into a repulper (a huge tub that looks something like a blender) with water. It is agitated to form a slushy pulp (slurry) of fiber and water.
   
   
6. a.  A big "ragger" chain or rope hangs down into the swirling tub of material. Some contaminants such as long pieces of rope, string or tape, plastic and metal bands will wrap around the ragger and can then be pulled out of the repulper.
   
   b.  The remaining pulp slurry goes through different types of equipment such as towers where the metal falls to the bottom for removal, screens, cyclones, and even big tanks where the contaminants float to the top and can be scraped off.  The cleaned pulp is then sent to the paper machine.
   
   
7. The highly diluted fiber solution is poured out onto a moving screen which allows water to drain away, forming a continuous fiber mat, which is pressed between rollers to remove more water.
   
   
8. The wet, continuous fiber web is then wound through the dryer section where the top and bottom of the web allternately contact the heated surfaces of the drying cylinders, removing the remaining moisture from the paper.
   
   
9. At the end of the paper machine, paper is rolled up on a large reel spool which can weigh 10-60 tons.
   
   
10. The reel is then slit and rewound into individual rolls that weigh approximately 3 tons each. The recycling process is complete; the new paper rolls are shipped to box manufacturers to begin the next stage in life to become new corrugated boxes.