Competing Materials
Corrugated vs. Plastic Packaging
Responsibly managed corrugated packaging is good for the planet – plastic packaging not so much.
Everyone knows by now that plastics are disastrously destructive to the environment, especially oceans and marine life. There is heavy pressure on the plastics industry to develop new solutions and more recyclable options that could mitigate and slow down the damage. The current recovery rate for plastics is dismal at 9 percent and falling.
Meanwhile, paper-based packaging has always been a sustainable choice: safe for wildlife, degradable in the elements, nontoxic, and recyclable. In 2025, 70–75% of cardboard available to be recycled in the U.S. was recycled and turned into new products. Corrugated boxes contain nearly 50% recycled material. Corrugated packaging supports a “circular economy” by minimizing raw material use and energy consumption, enabling robust recycling and reuse, and incorporating recycled materials into new products.
Finding Alternatives to Plastic Packaging
A growing number of campaigns to ban plastic waste are putting pressure on companies to find alternatives – not just for straws, but for all kinds of plastic packaging.
As policy-makers, companies and consumers begin to make changes to choose planet over plastics, it’s important that our industry provides information that allows decisionmakers to feel good about choosing corrugated packaging.
Unlike plastics, corrugated packaging has a tremendous end-of-life success story. More than 33 million tons of cardboard were recycled in the U.S. in 2025, or more than 90,000 tons every day.
Made from a renewable resource, reusable and recyclable corrugated packaging comes full circle every day. From efficient use of managed forest lands to sustainable practices during board and box manufacture to high recovery rates that put fiber back into our system, corrugated packaging is truly circular by nature.
Corrugated Packaging Excels over RPCs
Corrugated excels where RPCs fall short. See more information below:
