Think not only outside the box — but outside the room where the box is stored. This is a quote by Corbie Mitleid.  I do not know who she is, but I like her quote.

Long before the pandemic, when we first started discussing e-commerce issues, a friend and I talked about either purchasing stock in companies that made boxes and packaging or starting our own company. We did not have to be a rocket scientist to anticipate an increased need to ship product to our homes with the need for packaging to protect the item in transit. No, we did not commit and thus missed a golden opportunity.

I have to admit to purchasing on the web so much that UPS, FedEx and USPS drivers all know where we live and do not have to input our address into their GPS unit, but I still enjoy browsing and purchasing from our local merchants. Sometimes the convenience and timing outweigh the personal assistance from our local vendors. 

In the United States, the first record of corrugated boxes being manufactured was in 1875. Since then, we have escalated to using more than 80 billion according to a group called All County Recycling. Eighty percent of products sold in the United States are packaged in cardboard.

This statistic could sound even more harmful to our environment except that cardboard is easily recyclable. Since each household on average throws away 9,000 pieces of cardboard every year, recycling one ton of cardboard equates to saving 390 KWH of energy, 46 gallons of oil and 700 gallons of water.

Due to recycling and other factors such as pandemic hangover, 970 businesses showed a loss of 1.8 percent for 2023 from 2022 for production, not profits. However, the forecasts for years through 2027 provide a healthy climb averaging 4% approximately according to a Smithson study.

So happy someone was thinking outside the box regarding recycling because if we recycle our cardboard, the result is saving over nine million cubic yards of precious landfill space.

All of us feel more secure in our little box, because we are safe and protected.  However a quote from Tim Ferris states, “It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.” Be sure and check the right box.

Standard contributor Don Alexander can be contacted at dalexander@southernstandard.com