What Natural Resource is the Cardboard Obtained from?

The natural resource from which cardboard is obtained is wood. The tree most used in making cardboard and paper is pine, although other species are also used. Most of the wood used for this industry comes from sustainable forests.

The same packaging factories own thousands of hectares where the specimens to be used are grown and harvested, turning the entire process into a renewable resource.

Currently, many factories are also using cardboard and paper for recycling. Depending on the length of the fibers, both paper and cardboard can be recycled up to seven times.

Wood is the main natural resource from which cardboard is obtained

The process for the manufacture of paper and cardboard has a main component that is cellulose. Cellulose fibers can come from different materials, such as cotton, wood, esparto, and many others. This becomes a paste, to make the paper.

The cardboard is made up of different layers of paper, depending on the use it will have.

The most common uses for cardboard are packaging, which are the boxes in which the different products are transported..

Cardboard manufacturing and caring for the environment

Eco-design intervenes in the cardboard industry, which optimizes resource efficiency. This contributes to the prevention of waste and improvement of recycling..

Cardboard factories work together with manufacturers from other industries to design packaging based on the product it will contain. In this way, waste is reduced to a minimum, since the packaging has been custom designed..

The graphic industry is also intervening in eco-design with the use of vegetable inks to favor the reuse of the material..

Thanks to recycling, thousands of tons of cardboard come from the reuse of the base paste.

Paper and cardboard manufacturing process

For the manufacture of paper and cardboard the Kraft process is used (in German it means strong).

The logs are shredded into small pieces, and placed in a shredder, which dissolves the lignin under high pressure. What is obtained, which are the fibers, are cleaned and refined. Then through a Fourdrinier machine it becomes paper.

Once the manufacturing process is done, the cardboard can be shaped in different ways, such as corrugated cardboard. The machine used for this process measures more than 90 meters, with very heavy rollers to corrugate the cardboard.

Some rollers preheat it and others undulate it, these are equipped with grooves to be able to undulate it.

Then the corrugated cardboard is placed between two sheets of Kraft paper, and goes to the casting station. This station uses rollers to glue the sheets of paper using starch glue as glue..   

There are different types of cardboard, in addition to corrugated, depending on what will be its use:

Solid bleached or cardstock

Solid bleached cardboard or card stock is used in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry, in luxury and school packaging.

Unbleached solid

Solid unbleached cardboard is stronger. It is used for packaging of beverages, cans, bags ...

Folding carton

The folding carton is used in frozen food packaging, fish. It is made of several layers of chemical pulp and mechanical pulp.

Recycled fiber board

Recycled fiber cardboard is manufactured with recovered fibers, it is used in boxes for shoes, toys, cereals, among others..

References

1. "Carton" in Wikipedia. Retrieved in September 2017 from Wikipedia at: es.wikipedia.org
2. "Renewable natural resources" in Carton Containers / Environment (2014). Recovered in September 2017 from Procarton at: procarton.com
3. "Definition and types of cardboard" in The creative greenhouse (January 2015). Recovered in September 2017 from The Creative Greenhouse at: elinvernaderocreativo.com
4. "How is cardboard made? on eHow in Spanish. Retrieved in September 2017 from eHow in Spanish at: ehowenespanol.com
5. "Fourdrinier machine" in Universal Encyclopedia (2012). Retrieved in September 2017 from Enciclopedia Universal at: enciclopedia_universal.esacademic.com