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Narrator: This massive pile of pine trees will be turned into cardboard packaging. A single box can contain material from thousands of trees and pass through the hands of hundreds of workers. JJ: They're like, "It's just a box." And I say, "No, it ain't." A lot goes into it. Narrator: If you've used a cardboard box in the US today, there's a one-in-three chance that International Paper made it.
It's the world's largest paper company. Cardboard is essential for countless industries, protecting items as they move on trucks and ships. And the good news is that it's one of the most recycled materials in the world. But if so much of it gets reused, why do we still have to cut down millions of trees? And is it possible to make environmentally friendly cardboard? This mill in Georgia is just one
of hundreds of facilities operated by International Paper. It runs 24/7 to meet demand from online shopping, grocery stores, and more. But no one in this industry would call their product cardboard. Because it's not cardboard. Narrator: Insiders call it corrugated packaging, a wavy layer sandwiched between two flat outer sheets. But yeah, most people call it cardboard.
Making it starts with living trees. Forester Alex Singleton walked us through an area whose trees were sold to International Paper two years ago. Alex: It has since been replanted with longleaf pine. Narrator: But it will still take decades for the new crop to mature. For many foresters, we only see a site harvested once during our careers.
From this stage to there would probably be around 30 years. Narrator: After harvesting, landowners make money selling their trees to different industries, which makes them into things like lumber, telephone poles, and of course, paper. The idea is to turn forests into an investment so more people plant and maintain them. Alex: Without young, healthy forest,
our industry could not be successful. I don't view logging or clearcutting as negative. It's just the start of a process. Narrator: But critics say that replanting trees is not the same as letting them grow. This is one of the most industrial and heavily logged forests on the planet. Narrator: The southern US, sometimes called "America's wood basket," is home to
2% of the world's forested land, yet it produces nearly 20% of our pulp and paper products. Which either means it's highly productive, or highly exploited, depending who you ask. On a typical day, about 300 trucks loaded with freshly cut trees drive up to this mill. The first stop is the woodyard. Some of the trees are set aside into these massive piles,
which ensure the mill can sustain round-the-clock operations. They come from farms and forests within 120 miles. A sprinkler keeps them wet so they stay fresh and to reduce the risk of fire. A crane scoops trees from the pile and drops them into a machine that knocks off the bark. Clay: With a debarking drum, you're removing bark. You know, I tell kids similar to like a potato peeler.
Narrator: This process creates tons of leftover bark, which will be burned for energy. The debarked trunks travel through a chipper and pile up here. Clay: On that wood-chip pile, we can keep up to around 100,000 tons of chips. Narrator: It'll only take the mill about 10 days to work through this mountain. A conveyor belt feeds into the next step, pulping. Pine is made of long, stringy fibers held together
by a natural glue-like material called lignin. Papermakers want the fibers but not the glue, so they use steam and chemicals to dissolve it. The reaction can create gas that smells like sulfur. If you've ever noticed a rotten odor while driving by a paper plant, that's probably why. International Paper says its plants are built to capture a lot of those gases, which cuts down on smell.
The fibers are covered in a toxic mix of chemicals and tree residue, so they have to be cleaned. Clay: That liquor that's washed off gets evaporated and consolidated and goes into what we call a recovery boiler. Narrator: In other words, the plant burns those goopy leftovers, creating steam and chemicals that can go back through the process and save energy. We're really plants inside of a plant,
so we have our own chemical plant, our own power plant. Narrator: In fact, this mill makes about 75% of its own energy on-site. IP is also burning less coal than it used to, which helps cut down on factory emissions. But trees hold a lot of carbon, and the company's own sustainability report says carbon released by processing the trees was more than double its emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2022.
Before the pulp becomes paper, workers add used cardboard to the mix. Old packaging gets a new start in this warehouse. Katie: The boxes that we use here in the recycle plant come from local retailers and grocery stores up to a 300-mile radius from the mill. Narrator: Katie Fries has worked in this recycling mill for three years. She says people still have a lot of misconceptions about the process.
Our process is designed to take out the stuff like grease and tape. Just recycle any corrugated box you have, whether it has tape on it or food in it. It can be used to make paper again. Then you can recycle a pizza box. Narrator: Every day, this mill recycles 500 tons of used cardboard. Each ton saves trees, energy, and water. Saving water is key, because nearly every step
of papermaking uses lots of it. The used cardboard also gets pulped using water and chemicals, then mixes with fresh fibers. Workers simply call this massive contraption the paper machine. It presses the pulp flat and squeezes out water. Then it sends the mixture through a series of dryers heated to over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Narrator: And after all that,
you still only have paper. To become corrugated packaging, the rolls head to a box plant, like this one in Illinois. Here, flexible paper becomes sturdy boxes. The heartbeat of the plant is the corrugator. Narrator: Corrugating is how the packaging's middle layer gets that distinctive wavy shape. The waves are actually called flutes, and they're what gives this type of packaging its strength.
Mike: There are different types of flutes. Smaller ones print better, aren't as good for stacking strength. And the larger ones don't print as well, but they're better for stacking strength. Narrator: This plant can make boxes in over 1.6 million different designs. The smallest box I've ever made was about the size of a ring box, and the largest box I've ever made in one of my facilities was for a washing machine. Narrator: After gluing the layers together, finishing touches include printing on graphics
and cutting the sheets into their final shapes. To save space, most boxes shipped to customers flat, and any trimmings, or waste pieces, can be recycled right back into the process. In the US, more than 70% of used cardboard gets recycled, which is much higher than the rates for aluminum, glass, or plastic. Corrugated paper is easy to recycle, because the supply chain supports it,
so there's value in it. Narrator: It also helps that nearly 80% of Americans can recycle it using bins right on their curbs. So why does the industry still use up so many trees? Part of it is that old cardboard can't be recycled indefinitely. The EPA says it can only go through the process about seven times. Each time it goes through pulping and blending, the long, strong pine fibers get a bit shorter and weaker,
and eventually the degraded paper bits simply wash through the screens and out of the process. So recycling is very important, but even if 100% of boxes got reused, making new ones would still mean cutting down trees. Some experts say the big question is whether the industry manages forests responsibly. International Paper gets more than 90% of its fiber
from trees in the southern US, where the vast majority of woodlands are on private property. Alex: What we do is we provide a viable market for that landowner's trees, such that they will have the income or revenue to be able to pay for the reforestation that takes place on their lands. Narrator: Foresters and paper companies argue that without that market, people might just sell their land,
potentially losing forests forever to agriculture, parking lots, or other uses. Data from the University of Maryland shows that tree cover in the US today is about the same as it was in the year 2000. For me, as a forester, it must mean that we're doing our job right, you know, that we're taking care of the environment, that we're promoting forest growth. Narrator: But measuring forest area is complicated.
To start, not everyone agrees what a forest even is. Will: Pine plantations are not forests. Those are tree farms that lack the diversity, the structural diversity, the biological diversity that a lot of these species depend on. Narrator: An environmental nonprofit called the Dogwood Alliance says that tree farms have been replacing natural forests that could potentially have a global impact.
Some experts estimate that natural forests are 40 times better than plantations at storing carbon, which makes them crucial to slowing climate change. Forests have lots of other benefits, too, like filtering our drinking water and reducing erosion. Certain forestry techniques, like leaving some large trees in place, can help planted forests retain those benefits.
Will: I think there are ways to sustainably manage forests without taking out the the larger trees and completely destroying the structural complexity of a forest. But that takes really skilled, targeted forestry, and that's not always what happens. Narrator: Ultimately, the world uses a lot of paper, which has to come from somewhere. You might see certifications stamped on boxes.
Those are supposed to indicate they're made of trees that were harvested sustainably. International Paper says that more than 30% of the fibers it used in 2022 came from forests with one of those certifications. Will: I think there is a way for industry and conservation to coexist in southern forests. But there has to be a good-faith effort on all sides.
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