How The World's Largest Paper Company Makes 1/3 of Cardboard Boxes In America | World Wide Waste

this massive pile of pine trees will be turned into cardboard Packaging a single box can contain material from thousands of trees and pass through the hands of hundreds of workers they're like it's just a box I say no it ain't a lot a lot goes into it you've used a cardboard box in the US today there's a one in three chance that International Paper made it it's the world's largest Paper Company cardboard is essential for countless Industries protecting items as they move on trucks and ships and the good news is that it's one of the most recycled materials in the world but if so much of it gets reused why do we still have to cut down millions of trees and is it possible to make environmentally friendly cardboard this Mill in Georgia is just one of hundreds of facilities operated by International Paper it runs 24 7 to meet demand from online shopping grocery stores and more but no one in this industry would call their product cardboard why don't you like to use the word cardboard because it's not cardboard insiders call it corrugated Packaging a wavy layer sandwiched between two flat outer sheets but yeah most people call it cardboard making it starts with living trees Forester Alex Singleton walked us through an area whose trees were sold to International Paper two years ago it has since been replanted with longleaf pine but it will still take decades for the new crop to mature for many Foresters we only see a site harvested once during our careers from this stage to their probably be around 30 years after harvesting landowners make money selling their trees to different Industries which makes them into things like Lumber telephone poles and of course paper the idea is to turn forests into an investment so more people plant and maintain them without young healthy Forest our industry could not be successful I don't view logging or clear cutting as negative it's just the start of a process but critics say that replanting trees is not the same as letting them grow this is one of the most industrial and heavily logged forests on the planet the southern U.S sometimes called America's wood basket is home to two percent of the world's forested land yet it produces nearly 20 percent of our Pulp and Paper Products which either means it's highly productive or highly exploited depending on who you ask on a typical day about 300 trucks loaded with freshly cut trees drive up to this Mill the first stop is The Wood Yard some of the trees are set aside into these massive piles which ensure the mill can sustain round-the-clock operations they come from farms and forests within 120 miles a sprinkler keeps them wet so they stay fresh and to reduce the risk of Fire a crane Scoops trees from the pile and drops them into a machine that knocks off the bark with a debarking drum you're removing bark you know I tell kids similar to like a potato peeler this process creates tons of leftover bark which will be burned for energy the debarked trunks travel through a chipper and pile up here on that woodship pile we can keep up to around 100 000 tons of chips it'll only take the mill about 10 days to work through this mountain a conveyor belt feeds into the next step pulping Pine is made of long stringy fibers held together by a natural glue-like material called lignin paper makers want the fibers but not the glue so they use Steam and chemicals to dissolve it the reaction can create gas that smells like sulfur if you've ever noticed a rotten odor while driving by a paper plant that's probably why International Paper says its plants are built to capture a lot of those gases which cuts down on smell the fibers are covered in a toxic mix of chemicals and tree residue so they have to be cleaned that liquor that's washed off and gets evaporated and Consolidated and goes into what we call a recovery boiler in other words the plant Burns those goopy leftovers creating Steam and chemicals that can go back through the process and save energy we're really plants inside of a plant so we have our own chemical plant our own power plant in fact this Mill makes about 75 percent of its own energy on site IP is also burning less coal than it used to which helps cut down on Factory emissions but trees hold a lot of carbon and the company's own sustainability report says carbon released by processing the trees was more than double its emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2022 before the pope becomes paper workers add used cardboard to the mix old packaging gets a new start in this Warehouse the boxes that we use here in the recycle plant come from local retailers and grocery stores up to a 300 mile radius from the mill Katie Freeze has worked in this recycling Mill for three years she says people still have a lot of misconceptions about the process our process is designed to take out the stuff like grease and tape just recycle any corrugated box you have whether it has tape on it or food in it it can be used to make paper again then you can recycle a pizza box every day this Mill recycles 500 tons of used cardboard each ton saves trees energy and water saving water is key because nearly every step of paper making uses lots of it the used cardboard also gets pulped using water and chemicals then mixes with fresh fibers workers simply call this massive Contraption the paper machine presses the pulp flat and squeezes out water then it sends the mixture through a series of dryers heated to over 200 degrees Fahrenheit as that goes down the machine the sheet get drier and drier and after all that you still only have paper to become corrugated packaging the rolls head to a box plant like this one in Illinois here flexible paper becomes sturdy boxes the heartbeat of the plant is the corrugator corrugating is how the packaging's middle layer gets that distinctive wavy shape the waves are actually called flutes and they're what gives this type of packaging its strength there are different types of flutes smaller ones print better aren't as good for stacking strength and the larger ones don't print as well but they're better for stacking string this plant can make boxes in over 1.6 million different designs the smallest box I've ever made was about the size of a ring box or the largest box I've ever made in one of my facilities was for a washing machine after gluing the layers together finishing touches include printing on graphics and cutting the sheets into their final shapes to save space most boxes shipped to customers flat and any trimmings or waste pieces can be recycled right back into the process in the U.S more than 70 percent of used cardboard gets recycled which is much higher than the rates for aluminum glass or plastic before getting paper is easy to recycle because the supply chain supports it so there's value in it it also helps that nearly 80 percent of Americans can recycle it using bins right on their curbs so why does the industry still use up so many trees part of it is that old cardboard can't be recycled indefinitely the EPA says it can only go through the process about seven times each time it goes through pulping and blending the long strong Pine fibers get a bit shorter and weaker and eventually the degraded Paper Bits simply wash through the screens and out of the process so recycling is very important but even if a hundred percent of boxes got reused making new ones would still mean cutting down trees some experts say the big question is whether the industry manages forests responsibly International Paper gets more than 90 percent of its fiber from trees in the southern U.S where the vast majority of Woodlands are on private property what we do is we provide a viable market for that landowner's trees such that they will have the income or Revenue to be able to pay for the reforestation that takes place on their lands Foresters and paper companies argue that without that market people might just sell their land potentially losing forests forever to agriculture parking lots or other uses data from the University of Maryland shows that tree cover in the U.S today is about the same as it was in the year 2000. for me as a Forester it must mean that we're doing our job right you know that we're taking care of the environment that we're promoting Forest growth but measuring Forest Area is complicated to start not everyone agrees what a forest even is Pine plantations are not forests those are tree farms that lack the diversity the structural diversity the biological diversity that a lot of these species depend on an environmental non-profit called The Dogwood Alliance says that tree farms have been replacing natural forests that could potentially have a global impact some experts estimate that natural forests are 40 times better than plantations as storing carbon which makes them crucial to slowing climate change forests have lots of other benefits too like filtering or drinking water and reducing erosion certain forestry techniques like leaving some large trees in place can help planted forests retain those benefits I think there are ways to sustainably manage forests without taking out the larger trees and completely destroying the structural complexity of a forest but that takes really skilled targeted forestry and that's not always what happens ultimately the world uses a lot of paper which has to come from somewhere you might see certifications stamped on boxes those are supposed to indicate they're made of trees that were harvested sustainably International Paper says that more than 30 percent of the fibers it used in 2022 came from forests with one of those certifications think there is a way for industry and conservation to coexist in southern forests but there has to be a good faith effort on all sides

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 9,067,505

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, World Wide Waste, Garbage, Recycling, Cardboard

Id: _lsC0aXyY6g

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2023