A cardboard recycling center is a facility—often part of a larger Material Recovery Facility (MRF)—specifically designed to collect, process, and prepare used cardboard (both corrugated boxes and flat paperboard) so it can be turned into new paper products.
Its primary purpose is to divert cardboard from landfills, conserve natural resources, and reduce the energy needed to manufacture new materials.
Here is a breakdown of what a cardboard recycling center does:
Receiving: Cardboard arrives from various sources, including residential curbside bins, dedicated drop-off centers, and commercial businesses (like warehouses and retail stores).
Separation: At the facility, the cardboard is sorted from other recyclables (plastics, metals, glass) using a combination of manual labor and mechanical processes (like screens and conveyor belts).
Quality Check: It is crucial that the cardboard is clean and dry. Workers or specialized equipment remove contaminants like plastic bags, Styrofoam, grease (from pizza boxes), and excessive tape.
Baling: Clean cardboard is highly compressed into large, dense rectangular blocks called bales. This significantly reduces the volume, making it much more efficient to store and transport.
Shipping: These bales are then loaded onto trucks or rail cars and shipped to paper mills—the facilities that actually turn the old fiber into new products.
Pulping: At the paper mill, the bales are soaked in water and chemicals inside a machine called a pulper. This breaks the cardboard back down into individual fibers, creating a watery, slurry-like mixture called pulp.
Cleaning: The pulp is cleaned to remove any residual inks, glues, and small pieces of contaminants that passed through the initial sorting.
New Product Creation: The clean fiber is then pressed, dried, and rolled into large sheets, which are used to manufacture new products like new corrugated cardboard boxes, cereal boxes (paperboard), paper bags, or other paper products.
Recycling cardboard is highly efficient; it can save 25% of the energy and avoid using the three tons of raw wood required to produce one ton of brand-new cardboard.