As a carton supplier who’s spent the last 12 years navigating everything from small-batch local orders to national retail distribution, I’ve watched carton recycling shift from a “nice-to-have” sustainability buzzword to a non-negotiable part of how brands build trust with their customers. But lately, I’ve spent more time on calls with recycling centers, haulers, and even my own production team troubleshooting why so many of the cartons we deliver never actually make it back into a new box. It’s not that people don’t want to recycle—far from it. The challenges here are layered, messy, and often invisible to people who just drop a box in their curbside bin. Today, I want to break down what those challenges really look like from the front lines of both supplying cartons and seeing how they move through the recycling stream. Cartons
First, let’s clear up a common myth: most people think corrugated cartons are “easy” to recycle, right? Corrugated (the wavy inner layer and flat liners that make up a standard shipping box) is technically recyclable, and it’s one of the most recycled materials in the U.S. (the EPA says corrugated has a 92% recycling rate domestically, which is way higher than plastic’s 26%). But that number hides a huge gap: that 92% only counts the corrugated that actually gets separated from other waste, not the millions of boxes that get contaminated or rejected before they even hit a recycling pulper. As a supplier, I’ve seen this firsthand. A client will place an order for 5,000 custom shipping boxes for a holiday campaign, and we’ll talk through every detail to make sure the boxes are sturdy, printed correctly, and sized for their products. But when I get a follow-up question a month later, it’s almost always something like, “Wait, does this box go in the recycling or trash?” That confusion at the brand level is just the start of the problem.
Contamination is the biggest barrier we face, and it’s not just people tossing a greasy pizza box into the bin (though that’s a big one). It’s small, everyday things that seem trivial, but they ruin an entire bale of cartons. Let’s say a brand sends out a box with a plastic insert to protect a glass candle—what most teams don’t tell their customers is that the insert has to come out before recycling. If a customer tosses the whole box in the bin with the plastic still inside, that single piece of plastic can clog the pulper during recycling, and the entire batch gets rejected. Last year, one of our long-term retail clients had a 10,000-box order rejected by their local recycling center because 12% of the boxes still had tape and void fill inside. That 12% might not sound like much, but when you’re baling 50,000 pounds of cartons, even a small percentage of contamination ruins the whole load. We’ve started adding a 2-inch wide printed strip on every one of our commercial boxes that says “Remove tape and inserts before recycling” in bold text, but we can’t force customers to read it. What’s more, even if a customer does separate the plastic insert, that small plastic piece is often too small to be sorted at material recovery facilities (MRFs)—the places that process curbside recycling—and ends up getting swept into trash anyway. That’s a problem that starts at the supply chain: if we as carton suppliers are designing packaging that’s too reliant on mixed materials, we’re setting up the recycling stream to fail before it even starts.
Another underdiscussed challenge is the difference between “recyclable on paper” and “recyclable in practice.” For example, most of our food-service cartons are lined with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or low-density polyethylene (LDPE) to keep liquids from seeping through—think a takeout salad box or a frozen food carton. On a material safety data sheet, that’s marked as recyclable, but almost no curbside programs accept these lined cartons. MRFs can’t easily separate the plastic liner from the paper, so these cartons get pulled out and sent to landfill. As a supplier, we’ve had to make tough choices here. A client in the frozen food space came to us two years ago asking for fully recyclable frozen cartons, and when we tested lined cartons with the local recycling hauler, they were rejected. We ended up switching to a water-based coating instead of plastic, but that added 15% to the cost of each box, and some of our smaller clients couldn’t absorb that price increase. It’s a catch-22: we want to supply sustainable cartons, but if those cartons don’t actually get recycled, they’re just greenwashing for brands. And it’s not just food cartons—custom printed boxes, which are a huge part of our business, often use water-based inks that are technically fine for recycling, but some MRFs still reject boxes with dark or glossy prints because the ink can discolor the pulp during processing. We’ve worked with a third-party lab to test a new soy-based ink that’s MRF-compliant, but again, that adds cost, and not all our clients want to pass that on to their customers.
Then there’s the issue of mixed paper streams, which is something I’ve seen get worse as e-commerce booms. Ten years ago, most of the cartons we supplied were for retail store shipments, which were usually part of a consistent, large bale of corrugated that recycling centers could process easily. Today, 60% of our orders are for e-commerce brands, which means the boxes go through a lot more handling, and they often end up in bins with all kinds of other paper: receipts, junk mail, paper towels, even dirty napkins. Corrugated is denser than a lot of other paper products, so MRFs use air separators to sort it, but if there’s too much lightweight paper (like junk mail) mixed in, the air separator can’t tell the difference, and the corrugated gets lost. Last quarter, we supplied an e-commerce brand with 20,000 shipping boxes, and their recycling center reported that only 78% of the boxes were successfully recycled—down from the 91% the same brand had with a different supplier two years earlier. The difference? The new boxes were smaller, lighter, and mixed with more junk mail in the customer’s curbside bin. E-commerce growth has been a huge win for our business, but it’s put unprecedented strain on a recycling system that was built for a different kind of packaging.
We also can’t talk about carton recycling challenges without mentioning infrastructure gaps. Even if a brand uses 100% clean, unlined corrugated, and a customer separates all tape and inserts, that box only gets recycled if there’s a MRF nearby that accepts corrugated, and a recycling hauler that will pick it up. Rural areas are the worst here. I’ve had clients in small towns in the Midwest tell me their only option for recycling corrugated is to drive 45 minutes to the nearest grocery store drop-off bin. That’s a burden for customers, and it means a lot of those boxes end up in the trash. Even in urban areas, MRFs are struggling to keep up with the volume of recyclable material. The American Forest & Paper Association says that MRFs process 50 million tons of paper and paperboard each year, but many of them are outdated, with equipment that can’t sort new, lightweight corrugated or mixed materials. As a supplier, we’ve tried to work with local governments to set up bulk corrugated drop-off points near our clients’ warehouses, but funding for those programs is inconsistent. One city we work with stopped its bulk recycling program last year because of budget cuts, and suddenly, 30% of our client’s boxes were no longer being recycled. It’s not a problem that any one company can solve alone, but as a carton supplier, we’re stuck between the need to supply packaging that works for brands and the need to support a recycling system that can actually process it.
Another angle I don’t see talked about enough is the lack of standardization. Right now, there’s no universal label for carton recycling. One brand might put a “chasing arrows” symbol on their box, which means it’s recyclable in general. Another might put “corrugated only” to mean remove all inserts. A third might put “recycle with plastic bags” even though that’s a bad idea for MRFs. Customers are confused, and even most small business owners can’t keep up with the different rules for every local recycling program. As a supplier, we’ve worked to create a standardized label for our boxes that’s clear: a corrugated box icon with text that says “Remove all plastic/foam inserts and tape before recycling; check local rules for drop-off.” But without industry-wide adoption, customers still see different labels and don’t know what to do. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition has pushed for a universal label, but it’s slow going, especially with so many small suppliers and brands that can’t afford to reprint all their packaging.
I want to be clear: this isn’t a complaint about recycling, and it’s not a reason to give up on cartons as a sustainable packaging option. Corrugated is still one of the best packaging materials we have—it’s renewable, it’s reusable (many businesses use the same shipping box multiple times), and when it’s recycled, it makes new boxes, not just low-grade paper. But the challenges here are real, and they require collaboration across the entire supply chain: brands, suppliers, recycling centers, and customers.
As a carton supplier, we’re doing our part. We’ve invested in new production equipment that lets us make cartons with 100% post-consumer recycled content, without sacrificing strength. We’ve partnered with a non-profit that provides free recycling education to small e-commerce brands, teaching them how to design packaging that’s easy to recycle and how to communicate that to their customers. We’ve also expanded our recycled content options, so brands can choose how much post-consumer material they want in their boxes, without paying a premium.
If you’re a brand owner, operations manager, or anyone looking to make your packaging more sustainable, I know how overwhelming it can be. The space is full of jargon, and every supplier has their own “sustainable” claims that don’t always line up with reality. That’s why we make ourselves available to talk through your specific needs: whether you’re a small business just starting out, a large retail brand with bulk orders, or an e-commerce company trying to navigate the chaos of shipping and recycling. We can help you design cartons that work for your products, your budget, and the recycling stream, so your packaging doesn’t end up in a landfill. If you’d like to chat about how we can partner on your next order, feel free to reach out to our team to discuss your specific needs.
Recycled Paper Packaging References
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2023). Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures.
American Forest & Paper Association. (2022). Corrugated Recycling Industry Report.
Sustainable Packaging Coalition. (2023). Common Recycling Labeling Standards for Packaging.
National Waste and Recycling Association. (2023). E-Commerce Packaging and Recycling Infrastructure Study.
Dongguang K.B.D Pulp Mould Package Products Co., Ltd.
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