Fudge Sunday - Thinking Outside the Cardboard Box

Now that China has said “no thank you” to scrap recycling imports, there is a good chance the familiar cardboard recycling bin will take on greater significance as the piles… continue to make a bigger pile. This week, let’s take a look at the humble cardboard box.

Over the past 200 years there have been cardboard boxes big and small. The advent of global shipping and ever quickening supply chain technologies have only served to increase awareness of the cardboard box.

From inception to meme took roughly 200 years for the cardboard box. Now, the cardboard box is a keystroke away to help us all express ourselves faster than ever before.

Then again, by 2015, Amazon had become notorious due to a combination of expanding fulfillment options, smart phones, social media, and the seemingly unquenchable thirst for newly minted viral ready memes on the Interwebs.

Amazon is no stranger to robotics. The early adoption of Kiva robots indicates that fulfillment efficiency is a journey for Amazon, not simply a destination.

Looking ahead, there will be more opportunities to reclaim cardboard boxes in ways that favor the paper industry as a whole. Growing more trees is a good idea by almost any accounting of renewable resources.

Creative ideas will emerge. Ideas that smell like success will likely succeed.

If anything, perhaps the days of the plastic water bottle will become a footnote as boxed water and bio compost ready packaging takes hold in consumer purchasing patterns.

So until next time, don’t print this newslestter…

But feel free to forward it via email to a peer.

:-)