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

He's right about them being tree farms instead of forests. I've been to two man-made forests which were planted with at least 2-3 different of species of trees. The first noticeable thing when you're in the man-made forests is it's very quiet. You hardly hear any animal sounds in them. It's because it lacks diversity that is necessary to support a functioning animal ecosystem which itself is also very diverse.

Michael Scott's paper company can recycle more than 7 times

This is the first time in literally years of my life that I've seen reporting on a subject that is this unbiased. Really pleasant to watch.

As someone who works in forestry for a state government, you'll never find the right answers talking to one forester or another, there are so many ideas and concepts out there people won't agree. In general clear cutting is not the worst thing and can provide a lot of benefits, selective thinning is also not a bad option. It's very nuanced and it depends on previous forest management, ecological history, and what you want to do with the land in the future.

Great article which only scratches the surface of how much recycling and upcycling occurs in a modern paper mill. For example, the black liquor is not only burned; black liquor soap is recovered and refined into tall oil rosin which is used to make many products. As for the sustainable forestry practices, while 30% is a “low” number, the number was near 0% when I started my career in the mid-90’s. Considering the life cycle of a forest, getting to 30% in 30-yrs represents significant commitment and progress. It also means that 60% of the liner board and corrugated medium now comes from recycled or sustainably managed fiber sources! Can more de done? Absolutely but let’s not disregard the progress that has been made.

"It's highly productive or highly exploited depending on who you ask." I love that sentence. Also, only 30% of the Wood used by International Paper is certified. That's not much and I would have liked to know more why that is. Keep it up.

I work for a company that makes exclusively recycled linerboard. In the industry, that's the smooth outside sheet of your corrugated box, as opposed to the corrugating medium. Great to see this detailed documentary.

Thank you Katie for letting me know that I can put food stained or taped boxes in recycling, or the dreaded plastic window envelopes! You rock!

75% of their energy use being produced on site seems pretty incredible.

As a Amazon employee I think I know where most of theses boxes go

Great video! I retired from the design/engineering industry where I worked on many “paper mill projects yet I still learned from this video. I’ve always lived in the paper belt…we’re surrounded by pine forests, and I plant about 500 trees a year on my own property. This industry takes a toll on our highways and local roads…I probably have 50-60 loads of pine pass my house daily!

i thought it went trough dunder mifflin... you learn something new every day...

I work for international paper and we do take waste and recycling seriously it's a great company to work for and just the one machine I work on alone makes about 1,000,000+boxes a week on average

I think this was a great review of recycling and an explanation of where we get our paper products from

I recently bought a couple of products and the packaging was plain cardboard with minimal mono black ink labelling clearly aimed at recycling it's good to see some companies considering the renewablilty of there packaging. I hope more of the big corporates start adopting the same policy. What would be even more ideal is to make it possible to leave packaging at your door so when the delivery drivers come they can take it back to the supplier Amazon should introduce a program. Make it easy to open without damage.

Great video....the public needs to see this video!!!

1:36 Alex Singleton is my dad ☺️ I love visiting the paper mill and always loved riding with my dad to visit tree sites and replant trees

Not mentioned in the video is that every box also has an ECT (Edge Crush Test) rating. I was the person who did that testing at the Aurora (Montgomery) Knell Rd. plant IP factory that was Willamette Industries when I started there back in the day.

Consulting Forester in NC. Pines are thinned (around 45% cut out of a property) around age 15. 100% of this wood goes to the pulp and paper industry. If suitable, the pines can be thinned again around age 24. About 50% of that volume goes to pulp and paper. A final harvest is typically conducted around age 30. About ⅓ of the volume from a final harvest goes to pulp and paper.

I made bales of cardboard at work as well as clothes, what I noticed was if you put enough cardboard on the ends it acts like plywood and holds everything a lot tighter. It's amazing how small and heavy they can get.