Is The Cardboard Boxes Recycled A Perfect Circulation?

With the online business growing, incomputable packages are delivered or on their road worldwide. All these commodities are packaged in a cardboard paper box(or corrugated) to prevent breaks during the journey. You can imagine how much paper they cost! Fortunately, these boxes are rich in plant fiber (although not 100%), and the technology of cardboard boxes recycled is very advanced and proven. Let’s see how it works.

First Station – the Dump

The local dump will be the first station for those discarded cardboard boxes on their rebirth journey. Every day, they are sent to the local recycling center for the initial classification and procession. In there, these wasted corrugated papers will be pressed into cubes by machines. Then, paper mills purchase them.

Pulping

The paper cubes will be sent to the pulping machines first; all of them will be beaten into pieces. It is also a process of impurity separation. After all, there still are many gummed tapes, express bills, and the ink from marking pens left on the cardboard paper.

Inside the pulping machine, paper pieces and water are mixed together, being constantly stirred, and all the substances will be separated. Due to the different density of them, the paper pulp gets layered. Heavier stuff like plastics and metal will sink to the bottom, and the impurities like ink will float on the top; All of them will be removed, and finally, we get highly purified paper pulp(it looks more like wet earth at this moment.)

Additives

After we get the purified paper pulp, we need to add water again to dilute it. At the same time, various kinds of additives will be added according to the different end uses(like every specialty paper.) For example, with the water-proofing agent, we can get the cardboard for making waterproof boxes; they are best for packaging stuff which will secret water, like fruits and vegetables.

Shape Up

The next step is to shape up. The water content of the paper pulp is about 90% at this time, and it needs to be reduced. In the shaping machine, the paper pulp will be sprayed evenly on the conveyor. The rollers keep rolling to squeeze the pulp to remove water.

These rollers can create a certain vacuum inside, making the paper pulp stick tighter except for pressing it. Besides, there is a compact filter screen on the surface of the roller for better separating water and making the fiber become more fixed.

The thickness of the paper is also determined at this time. For example, a roller processes 25gsm paper, that papers from 5 rollers plus and press tight together and it will get a 125gsm paper.

Drying

After press shaping, the water content of the paper reduces to about 40%. Now the paper will be high-temperature heating to remove water further. According to different end uses, the water content standard is also different. Paper that can’t reach the standard should be returned to dry again.

Is Cardboard Boxes Recycled A Perfect Circulation?

Do you think that it looks like a perfect circulation for cardboard boxes recycled? Pity that’s not.

First, some loss is inevitable while beating the waste cardboard boxes into pulp. Besides, during constant recycling, the strength of the fibers will reduce gradually. Even though there are some ways to fix this problem, the regenerated fiber’s end-use gets limited.

Thus, although the cardboard boxes recycled tech still improving, you’d better reuse every one of your packages’ paper boxes. DIY toys(like an Awesom-O) with children with the waste cardboard boxes can get fun and increase their environmental awareness simultaneously.