Goodbye December, so long 2020! Holidays filled this past month as usual. Christmas was by far the most significant for me and my family. Yet, looking at the squares on our kitchen calendar, we took note of occasions such as Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, the First Day of Winter and now New Year’s Eve. Other days I have learned about over the years have always been outside my culture or tradition, like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
This past Saturday was Boxing Day, a holiday with English roots when people gave gifts to the poor. Throughout the countries of the former British Empire the day, like Christmas, is another reason to shop. After working at the Keep Alliance Beautiful Recycling Center for more than a year and a half, anytime I hear about the word “box’ in any context recycling comes to mind. I hope this week and next Box Butte County and other area residents will help KAB focus attention on our own version of Boxing Day — bring as many of your used Christmas present boxes as possible to our trailers, recycling center or curbside collection.
Overall, KAB has witnessed healthy residential cardboard recycling throughout this past year. We routinely empty the large green cardboard recycling trailer twice a week. While I know people try to shop local whenever possible, online shopping has become more prevalent during the pandemic — and we have seen that trend in the boxes that end up in our baler. Christmas is the peak for boxes. I encourage anyone with cardboard, paperboard or wrapping left over to let us recycle it for you rather than filling the dumpster. Try it this week and recycling cardboard may become an easy resolution to keep for 2021.
Recycled cardboard to make new boxes is in demand. The more boxes KAB handles will be that many more tons of reused material that could be part of shoppers’ Christmas boxes next year.
If only that doll’s box we saw this week, for example, could tell a story. Our morning crew took out the plastic fittings, stuffed them in an orange Hefty Energy Bag, and tossed her in the baler with broken down sheets of cardboard and boxes of every size. By the end of the shift she was part of a bale taken out and stacked at the north end of the building. Spud will be here by next week and take that bale with his load to the southern Panhandle. From there, the roughly one-ton rectangular cube will be marketed and transported to a factory. If the facility produces new boxes they are in turn made to hold specific products and delivered to waiting assembly lines. The cardboard that contained an Alliance girl’s doll could end up as a box packed by workers overseas with a product that will become the hit children’s gift for Christmas 2021.
I have yet to attempt the type of legwork that would show what ultimately became of one box or even one bale of cardboard that originated at our recycling center. Perhaps in a future column the life of a box can be determined. Importantly, recycling has the expected benefits of reducing the amount of raw materials (trees) needed to produce new cardboard boxes and keeps dozens of tons of trash out of the Alliance landfill.
We see boxes at the end of their current lives. I commend others who handle packages and shipments. Thank you to the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and UPS workers who sort and deliver; to the grocery store stockers who keep the shelves full and tidy; to the BNSF Railway train crews who guide trailers and containers from ports to the Heartland; short- and long-haul truckers; and especially to all our local businesses where we pick up their boxes every week.