Christmas is synonymous with a lot of things, candy canes, cards, caroling, but with the revolution of online shopping you can add another word to that list: Cardboard.
More and more shoppers are choosing to do their shopping from home. Research from Deloitte is forecasting a 17-22% jump this year in online sales. Most of those purchases will be delivered to homes in cardboard boxes. Recycle Utah director Carolyn Wawra says that they’ve seen a significant increase in cardboard drop-offs.
“If you are familiar with a recycling center, we have a tan container it’s called our compactor it’s a machine that kind of smashes it all up. We’re kind of to the point where—our operations manager started about a year and a half ago and Insa told him back then oh you’ll maybe haul this maybe twice a week. We’re hauling it four or five times a week right now. We definitely have seen a change in how people shop and how people enjoy the holidays and how people find their Christmas gifts for sure. A lot of big boxes too. A lot of replacing your TV. A lot of Amazon boxes of course. A lot of new furniture, we could totally tell that World Market had a sale on furniture because we saw all the World Market boxes come in the week after Thanksgiving. We’re kind of seeing what’s happening out in the market place at the end of it all.”
Wawra says that cardboard market has changed significantly over the past few years.
“Most cardboard is turned back into cardboard. It does have a life cycle that it can only be recycled so many times. A cardboard box is the newer end of the cycle whereas a toilet paper roll is the end of the cardboard cycle. The cardboard market has changed the most out of any commodity since I’ve started my job. It started and was really awesome and right now I wouldn’t describe it quite awesome. There is still a market and we’re still able to work the markets for cardboard. So, not great but still we’re doing the right thing we’re keeping it out of the landfill, hauling it down to Salt Lake four or five times a week right now. It’s been pretty big.”
As China has started to turn away recycling materials from other countries, some recycling markets have become volatile. The timing of a changing market is interesting for Recycle Utah as they are looking to move to a new location within a year.
“The partnership between us and Summit County has been awesome. We’re working together a lot. Not a lot of things I can talk about, but I can tell you we are working on that. Then I’m having good conversations with the board on our master plan. We’re even getting ready for requests for qualifications to see who wants to build our site and what it would look like. It’s getting pretty exciting, we’re taking big steps. Getting ready to move when the time needs to be that we need to be out.”
That’s Recycle Utah Director Carolyn Wawra. Wawra reminds listeners to pre-sort their Christmas recycling before coming to the center. Recycle Utah is closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
