Cardboard Nation

America has become a nation of boxes: Delivery trucks are full of them, mailboxes and front porches overflow with them. Amazon boxes, U.P.S. boxes, FedEx boxes, pizza boxes—almost everything we buy comes in a box. But where do all those cardboard boxes come from, and is the supply endless?

Every cardboard box on your doorstep started life as a tree—probably a loblolly pine, a slender conifer native to the Southeastern United States.

“The wonderful thing about the loblolly,” says Alex Singleton, peering out over a tree farm in West Georgia, “is that it grows fast and grows pretty much anywhere, including swamps.”

Singleton has spent the past few years as a fiber supply manager for International Paper, or I.P., the biggest company in America’s flourishing cardboard industry. I.P. is responsible for a third of the boxes produced in the U.S. Singleton’s job is to source enough loblollies to help keep I.P.’s production lines humming.

One of those production lines is in Rome, Georgia, where the I.P. plant churns out enough cardboard every day to cover a two-lane highway from the mill almost to El Paso, Texas, about 1,350 miles away.

America has become a nation of boxes. Delivery trucks are full of them. Mailboxes and front porches overflow with them. Almost everything we buy comes in a box. That includes Amazon boxes, U.P.S. boxes, FedEx boxes, and pizza boxes. But where do all those cardboard boxes come from, and is the supply endless?

Every cardboard box on your doorstep started life as a tree, probably a loblolly pine. This slender conifer is native to the Southeastern United States.

“The wonderful thing about the loblolly,” says Alex Singleton, peering out over a tree farm in West Georgia, “is that it grows fast and grows pretty much anywhere, including swamps.”

Singleton has spent the past few years as a fiber supply manager for International Paper (I.P.). It’s the biggest company in America’s booming cardboard industry. I.P. produces a third of all boxes made in the U.S. Singleton’s job is to source enough loblollies to help keep I.P.’s production lines humming.

One of those production lines is in Rome, Georgia. There, the I.P. plant churns out enough cardboard every day to cover a two-lane highway from the mill almost to El Paso, Texas. That’s a span of about 1,350 miles.

“We’ve got about 8,000 tons of trees coming in here every day, and we’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Kevin Walls, a manufacturing executive at the facility.

But to get a real sense of the scale of the modern corrugated cardboard industry, you have to do some extrapolation: Take those 1,350 miles and add the output of the 25 other paper mills I.P. runs from Georgia all the way out to Washington state. Add again the yield from the dozens of paper mills owned by the company’s competitors. Suddenly, you’re no longer talking about thousands of miles of paper, but millions of miles—every day.

And it’s barely enough to meet demand: Cardboard manufacturers broke production records in 2021, and they’ve been breaking them basically every quarter since. By 2025, according to one estimate, the size of the international market for corrugated packaging will reach $205 billion, on par with the gross domestic product of New Zealand or Greece.

“We’ve got about 8,000 tons of trees coming in here every day, and we’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Kevin Walls, a manufacturing executive at the facility.

But to get a real sense of the scale of the modern cardboard industry, you have to do some math. Take those 1,350 miles and add the output of the 25 other paper mills I.P. runs from Georgia all the way out to Washington state. Add in the yield from the dozens of paper mills owned by the company’s competitors. Suddenly, you’re no longer talking about thousands of miles of paper. Instead, you’re talking about millions of miles every day.

And it’s barely enough to meet demand. Companies that produce cardboard broke production records in 2021. And they’ve been breaking them basically every quarter since. By 2025, the size of the international market for packaging made with cardboard materials will reach $205 billion, according to one estimate. That would put it on par with the gross domestic product of New Zealand or Greece.

Most of us get a lot of boxes delivered every week. Precise household numbers are hard to come by, but the Fibre Box Association, a trade group, says U.S. factories generated more than 400 billion square feet of cardboard in 2020.

Cardboard box consumption spiked in the early days of the pandemic, when everything we needed arrived at our homes swathed in brown-paper packaging. The trend lines have never reversed course.

Most of us get a lot of boxes delivered every week. Exact household numbers are hard to come by. The Fibre Box Association, a trade group, says U.S. factories generated more than 400 billion square feet of cardboard in 2020.

Cardboard box use spiked in the early days of the pandemic. During that time, everything we needed arrived at our homes in brown-paper packaging. The trend lines have never reversed course.

In 2020, the world’s paper and cardboard factories produced an estimated 400 million-plus metric tons of product. By 2032, analysts predict that number will rocket to 1.6 billion metric tons, the weight of 16,000 aircraft carriers. It’s safe to say that never in human history have we relied so much on one kind of mass-produced packaging material, and certainly not at such scale.

Outside the Rome, Georgia, manufacturing facility one day last spring, a crane was removing timber from a log truck and feeding it into the bladed mouth of a cylindrical machine known as a debarking drum. The machine churned and chewed and spit out the denuded trees. After debarking, the trees go into a steel chipper: In go the debarked trees, out comes a spray of loblolly pine.

Inside the mill, chips from the woodyard sit in vats in which a chemical cocktail is used to break the chipped timber down to a gloppy sludge.

“We’re after the cellulose fibers,” Walls says, explaining what makes cardboard so strong. “The long, strong fibers.”

In 2020, the world’s paper and cardboard factories produced an estimated 400 million-plus metric tons of product. By 2032, analysts predict that number will rocket to 1.6 billion metric tons. That’s the weight of 16,000 aircraft carriers. It’s safe to say that never in human history have we relied so much on one kind of mass-produced packaging material. We’ve certainly never done so on such a large scale.

Outside the Rome, Georgia, manufacturing facility one day last spring, a crane was removing timber from a log truck. It was feeding the wood into the bladed mouth of a round machine known as a debarking drum. The machine churned and chewed and spit out the stripped trees. After debarking, the trees go into a steel chipper. And what comes out is a spray of loblolly pine.

Inside the mill, chips from the woodyard sit in containers. A chemical cocktail inside of them is used to break the chipped timber down to a thick sludge.

“We’re after the cellulose fibers,” Walls says, explaining what makes cardboard so strong. “The long, strong fibers.”

The pulp is funneled to the paper machine, which stretches across almost the entire mill floor and trembles like a space shuttle just before liftoff. Pulp sluices in and is flattened into a paperlike consistency. Next comes the “calendering” station, where the water is squeezed out, and then the dryer.

The multi-ton rolls land on the floor, where they’re moved to be cut to size and sent to the loading area to be ferried to separate facilities for corrugation—the folding-and-layering action that makes cardboard cardboard.

The pulp is funneled to the paper machine. The machine stretches across almost the entire mill floor. It trembles like a space shuttle just before liftoff. Pulp pours in and is flattened into a paperlike texture. Next comes the “calendering” station, where the water is squeezed out. Then it goes through the dryer.

The multi-ton rolls land on the floor. They’re cut to size and sent to the loading area. Once there, they’ll be ferried to separate centers to be folded and layered into corrugated cardboard.

On the one hand, there’s something a little surreal about the emergence of cardboard as a growth industry—a box, after all, is a commodity whose only purpose is to hold other, more valuable commodities. On the other hand, it makes all the sense in the world.

“Corrugated packaging has a Goldilocks quality to it,” says Tim Cooper, a project director for the market research and testing firm Smithers.

“I’m hesitant to call anything recession-proof,” Cooper adds, “but corrugated packaging is close. Pretty much everyone—manufacturer and consumer—has come to see it as vital to their lives.”

Cardboard is also highly recyclable: More than 90 percent of cardboard gets recycled annually. That puts other recycling rates to shame. About 30 percent of glass bottles get recycled and about half of aluminum cans. In 2021, only 5 percent of the plastic waste consumed in the U.S. was recycled; the remainder ended up in landfills.

On the one hand, there’s something a little surreal about the rise of cardboard as a growth industry. A box, after all, is a product whose only purpose is to hold other, more valuable products. On the other hand, it makes all the sense in the world.

“Corrugated packaging has a Goldilocks quality to it,” says Tim Cooper, a project director for the market research and testing firm Smithers.

“I’m hesitant to call anything recession-proof,” Cooper adds, “but corrugated packaging is close. Pretty much everyone—manufacturer and consumer—has come to see it as vital to their lives.”

Cardboard is also highly recyclable. More than 90 percent of cardboard gets recycled annually. That puts other recycling rates to shame. About 30 percent of glass bottles get recycled and about half of tin cans. In 2021, only 5 percent of the plastic waste in the U.S. was recycled; the rest ended up in landfills.

Historically, rates of cardboard production have dipped at moments of recession or depression but generally extended upward at the same inexorable and gentle rate—until the 2010s, when the lines became considerably more steep.

“E-commerce was the fuel on the fire,” Cooper says. “After online shopping really caught on, that’s the moment corrugated production numbers really went wild.”

We wanted more stuff, and we wanted it quickly, and we wanted it without ever leaving our homes. Retailers and the packaging industry were happy to help. In 2021, Amazon shipped $470 billion of goods globally, in an estimated 7.7 billion packages.

In the past, rates of cardboard production have dipped during recessions or depressions. They’ve generally gone upward at the same consistent and gentle rate. In the 2010s, those lines suddenly got much steeper.

“E-commerce was the fuel on the fire,” Cooper says. “After online shopping really caught on, that’s the moment corrugated production numbers really went wild.”

We wanted more stuff, and we wanted it quickly. We also wanted it without ever leaving our homes. Retailers and the packaging industry were happy to help. In 2021, Amazon shipped $470 billion of goods globally. Doing so took an estimated 7.7 billion packages.

The massive expansion of the cardboard industry is changing the environment around us. Just look at the American South, says Robert Abt, an emeritus professor at North Carolina State’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. In Georgia and Alabama, once-diversified family farms have given way to small empires of tree plantations, largely by planting pines in a region where other types of trees—or other crops, like cotton—once grew.

“You’re pivoting to where the profit is,” Abt says.

Jamie Jordan, who owns a farm outside of Rome, Georgia, is one of those farmers who’ve pivoted.

“We’ve always been farmers, as far back as any of us can remember,” Jordan says. “It was my daddy, and his daddy before that, and so on, and then it was me. . . . And we grew it all: vegetables, corn, cotton.”

These days, Jordan grows a lot of pine, sending much of the pulpwood to the I.P. mill in Rome. His farm has become a forest—it’s just pines as far as the eye can see. And little wonder: Those trees are powering a huge and growing part of our economy—e-commerce.

“It’s easy to produce, it’s strong, and it’s sustainable,” Cooper says of cardboard, “because unlike plastic, it comes from a renewable resource.”

The massive expansion of the cardboard industry is changing the environment around us. Just look at the American South, says Robert Abt, an emeritus professor at North Carolina State’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. Georgia and Alabama were once home to a lot of diversified family farms. Now, the land across these states houses small empires of tree plantations. This shift largely has been fueled by the planting of pines in regions where other types of trees—or other crops, like cotton—once grew.

“You’re pivoting to where the profit is,” Abt says.

Jamie Jordan, who owns a farm outside of Rome, Georgia, is one of those farmers who’ve pivoted.

“We’ve always been farmers, as far back as any of us can remember,” Jordan says. “It was my daddy, and his daddy before that, and so on, and then it was me. . . . And we grew it all: vegetables, corn, cotton.”

These days, Jordan grows a lot of pine, sending much of the pulpwood to the I.P. mill in Rome. His farm has become a forest, with pines as far as the eye can see. And little wonder: Those trees are powering a huge and growing part of our economy: e-commerce.

“It’s easy to produce, it’s strong, and it’s sustainable,” Cooper says of cardboard, “because unlike plastic, it comes from a renewable resource.”

Matthew Shaer writes frequently for The New York Times Magazine.

Matthew Shaer writes frequently for The New York Times Magazine.