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Boxboard
The average household produces 18.06 kilograms of dry Boxboard per year. Dry boxboard consists of 5.01% of the total waste stream and locally 84.83% of all boxboard produced is recovered.
The average household produces 13.16 kilograms of fine paper per year. Fine paper consists of 3.65% of the total waste stream and locally 72.19% of all fine paper produced is recovered.
Boxboard is a general term designating the paper board intermediate product used to fabricate folding cartons and set-up boxes. A folding carton (e.g. cereal box) is folded for shipment to the user, while the set-up box (e.g. the old style shoebox) is shipped in the form and shape of its end use. (Industry, Science and Technology, "Industry Profile: Boxboard" 1988).
What is Acceptable?
How to Prepare Material:Flatten boxboard containers and place inside another boxboard container. Please remove all wrap, spouts and liners. Place fine paper in the same boxboard container. This material should be placed beside your blue box for collection.
What Happens after the Material Leaves your Blue Box? Once the driver collects the boxboard from your blue box, the material is sorted into a separate compartment of the truck with other paper fibres and brought back to the plant in Huron Park, Ontario and dumped onto the tipping floor. From the tipping floor the material is moved along a conveyor belt to the fibre sortation line.
Typically, the loads of paper contain different "grades" of paper that need to be separated in order to be sold on the market. While the markets often dictate which grades of paper will be separated, the Association separates the paper fibres into two main categories, newspaper mix, and cardboard and boxboard mix. The cardboard and boxboard mix contains cardboard, boxboard, coloured office paper, junk mail, and paper egg cartons.
What Happens after the Material Leaves Bluewater? The process of making recycled boxboard depends on the initial raw material and the final product requirements. As many contaminants as possible must be removed and then those that are still left are dispersed. The first step in manufacturing recycled boxboard is placing bales of waste paper in a hydrapulper. This makes the board into a slurry form, breaking down individual fibres. The fibres go through a centrifugal cleaner where nuts, bolts and other heavy objects that might cause damage are removed. Then the slurry is run across a pressure or vibrating screen where Styrofoam and plastic bags and other larger contaminants are size separated. The last screen has 1/10,000 inch slots which remove stickies and other latex contaminants.
After being pulped and cleaned, the slurry moves to a cylinder machine. The forming cylinders of a cylinder machine are covered with a wire so that, as they turn within a vat filled with stock solution, fibres are picked up to form a web on the surface with water draining through and passing out at the ends. The wet sheet is then transferred off the cylinder onto a felt for possible combining with other sheets (multiple cylinders on the same machine) and subsequent pressing and drying.
Most recycled boxboard is produced on a multicylinder machine. Recycled grades typically consist of six to eight piles. The upper layer is made from a deinked pulp or other high quality waste paper such as one of the pulp substitutes. Inner piles are made into lower quality paper stock, such as old news and mixed papers, combined with some old corrugated containers for additional strength. The lower layer, or back ply, can be made of old news, corrugated pulp or substitutes, depending on strength and appearance." ( Environmental Defense Fund, "Composition, Supply and Markets for Magazines, Mail and Boxboard", 1990).
The major barrier faced by boxboard recyclers is contamination. Hot metal glues and adhesives pose the biggest problems. These are not easily removed through the cleaning processes and surface in the recycled boxboard as visual imperfections. Solutions to this problem include changing to water-based adhesives, educating householders to separate the boxboard from other materials and relaxing industry specifications for boxboard to allow the use of specked material.
Bacterial contamination is also a problem, especially for food packaging. Slimicides can be added to the batches to be manufactured in order to reduce this type of contamination, but health-related testing must be conducted to ensure their safety. (RCO Webpage)
For more information, click here for another fact sheet. Questions and Answers?
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