Over 7 Tons of Cardboard Recovered During Residence Hall Move-In

As students returned to campus and moved back into residence halls this month, they brought with them carloads of belongings – clothes, furniture, computers, televisions, and other electronic appliances – most of which were packed in cardboard boxes. To make sure all those extra boxes didn’t end up in the landfill, the KU Recycling staff was busy collecting cardboard from halls throughout the week. With help from the Department of Student Housing and its Custodial Services, who broke down boxes and stacked them for collection, we were able to recover more than 7 tons of cardboard during the first 4 days of move-in alone! This is a significant amount of material that will eventually be sold to paper mills and turned into useful products like chipboard, paper towels, tissues, and printing paper, a process that both conserves energy and natural resources and reduces air pollution from paper plants.

The Environmental Stewardship Program would like to continue these efforts to keep the cardboard that comes onto campus from going off campus in dumpsters. If you notice buildings with considerable amounts of cardboard ending up in the trash, or if you dispose of cardboard on a regular basis, please contact Jeff Severin, Environmental Services Manager, at 864-4703. We are working to establish more drop-off locations and can even schedule special on-site collections. Working together, we can help reduce waste on campus while conserving and protecting natural resources worldwide.

Why Recycle Cardboard?

• Over 90% of all products in the U.S. are shipped in corrugated cardboard boxes.
• Making the pulp from trees for use in corrugated cardboard creates sulfur dioxide pollution. However, recycling corrugated cardboard into new products cuts the emissions of sulfur dioxide in half and uses about 25% less energy than making cardboard from virgin pulp.
• Recycling one ton of cardboard saves over nine cubic yards of landfill space
• After it’s recycled, paper (including cardboard) is used to make chipboard (i.e., cereal boxes), paper towels, tissues, and printing and writing paper.
• Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates 1 job, land filling the same amount creates 6 jobs, recycling the same 10,000 tons creates 36 jobs.

Special thanks to the KU Recycling Technicians who put in many difficult hours moving mountains of cardboard and to Tom Boxberger with the Environmental Stewardship Program for assisting with collections and for baling nearly off of the material picked up through the move-in project.