How to recycle corrugated cardboard
Recycling corrugated is simple, but doing it well — clean bales, no contaminants, a documented diversion trail — is what turns cardboard from a cost into a recovered commodity. Here's the whole process.
Recycling at business scale?
Tell us your volume — we'll set up baling and pickup.
To recycle corrugated the right way: flatten and sort your boxes, remove contaminants (tape, plastic, wax, food), bale or bundle the clean corrugated, store it dry, arrange an OCC pickup, and document the diversion with weights and tickets. Clean, dry, baled OCC is a valuable commodity — reuse first, but recycle what's truly spent instead of landfilling it.
Before you recycle: reuse first
One quick gut-check before the baler. If a box is still structurally sound, recycling it is the wrong first move — reuse beats recycle on both cost and carbon because it skips re-pulping entirely. Sell serviceable surplus into our Reuse Loop and recycle only what's genuinely spent: crushed, wet, contaminated or wax-coated. Everything below assumes you've already pulled the reusable boxes out.
The six steps
Flatten & sort
Break every box down flat — collapsed boxes bale densely and ship efficiently, while intact boxes trap air and waste trailer space. As you flatten, sort by grade: keep clean corrugated (OCC) separate from mixed paper, chipboard, and anything non-recyclable. A clean single-grade stream is worth more and gets rejected less.
Remove contaminants
Pull off packing tape, plastic film, foam inserts, labels, staples and metal banding. Set aside anything wax-coated, greasy or food-soiled — wax coatings and grease contaminate the pulp and get whole loads downgraded or rejected. You don't need surgical perfection; small tape remnants are screened at the mill. The goal is clean fiber, not spotless fiber.
Bale or bundle
At business scale, run flattened corrugated through a vertical or horizontal baler to produce dense, wire-tied bales — the format mills pay for and haulers move most efficiently. At small scale, tie flattened boxes into flat, stable bundles with twine. Either way you're maximizing density so a pickup moves as much fiber as possible per trip.
Store dry
Keep bales and bundles under cover and off the ground on a pallet. Wet corrugated loses recyclability fast: moisture weakens the fiber, invites mold, and adds weight that mills won't pay for. A dry storage spot protects both the material value and your diversion numbers.
Arrange an OCC pickup
Once you've accumulated enough volume for an efficient load, schedule collection with a recycler or hauler. Full, consolidated pickups beat frequent partial ones on both cost and carbon. At business volumes we can set up recurring baling and pickup so the fiber never piles up.
Document the diversion
Capture the weight ticket and destination from every pickup. Those records add up to a diversion trail — proof of how much corrugated you kept out of landfill — which you'll want for sustainability reporting, zero-waste certifications and internal audits. If you can't measure it, you can't claim it.
Business-scale vs. small-scale
The steps are identical; the equipment scales. A small operation flattens by hand, bundles with twine, and drops fiber at a local recycler or curbside OCC program. A warehouse or distribution center invests in a baler, dedicates a staging area, and runs scheduled pickups measured by the ton. The break-even for a baler comes surprisingly fast once you factor in avoided hauling of loose cardboard and the rebate value of clean OCC bales.
What is — and isn't — recyclable
Recyclable (put it in OCC):
- Clean, dry corrugated boxes and Gaylords
- Kraft corrugated sheet, pads and dividers
- Brown corrugated with light printing or small tape remnants
Not standard OCC (keep it out):
- Wax-coated boxes — the coating contaminates pulp; most mills reject them. Handle separately.
- Grease- or food-soiled cardboard (pizza boxes, oily liners).
- Wet or moldy corrugated that has lost fiber integrity.
- Foam, plastic film, laminated or foil-lined board, and heavy adhesive labels.
Clean, dry, baled corrugated isn't trash — it's a commodity mills compete to buy. The cleaner your stream, the more it's worth and the less ends up landfilled.
Getting a diversion trail that stands up
If sustainability reporting matters to your business, treat documentation as part of the job, not an afterthought. Log each pickup's weight, date and destination; keep the scale tickets; and total them monthly. A consistent record lets you report tonnage diverted from landfill with confidence and supports zero-waste-to-landfill claims. Pair it with your reuse numbers from the Reuse Loop and you have the full picture of what your operation kept in circulation — the story behind our sustainability commitment.
Frequently asked questions
Is wax-coated cardboard recyclable?
Do I need to remove tape before recycling?
What is OCC in recycling?
Turn your cardboard into recovered value.
Business-scale baling and pickup — tell us your volume to get started.