Cardboard boxes from the factory floor to your door and beyond

It’s a scene that’s replayed in every neighbourhood across Canada. Vans and trucks coming and going, delivering goods in cardboard boxes large and small. On paper garbage collection day, cardboard boxes pile up at the end of driveways, waiting for the recycling trucks to take them away. Let’s follow the trail of cardboard boxes in Canada, from the factory floor to your door and beyond.

Cardboard box manufacturing sales have almost doubled in a decade

Cardboard container manufacturers generated revenues of $7.9 billion in 2022, $1.6 billion more than they sold prior to the pandemic in 2019 and almost double (84.4%) the amount sold a decade earlier ($4.3 billion).

Factories in Ontario ($4.1 billion) and Quebec ($2.2 billion) accounted for almost two-thirds of cardboard container sales in 2022.

E-commerce and brick-and-mortar shops are an excellent source of cardboard boxes

Cardboard boxes generally make their way to Canadians homes via e-commerce or from a local brick-and-mortar store.

E-commerce sales totalled $63.7 billion in 2022, accounting for 7.8% of total retail sales.

The biggest and the best cardboard boxes (in terms of fort building) generally come with a big-ticket item inside it such as a refrigerator, stove or flat-screen television. In 2022, Canadian retailers sold $46.4 billion of furniture, home furnishings, electronics and appliances.

What do Canadian households do with their cardboard boxes from online purchases?

Just over four in five Canadian households (83%) told us they made an online purchase in the past year in 2021.

Almost 9 in 10 Canadian households (88%) that made an online purchase eventually recycled their e-commerce boxes via curbside pickup or a depot/drop off program.

Over two-thirds of Canadian households reused the boxes to ship or store something else (41%) or kept the box for future use (29%).

Just over one in five Canadian households (22%) used or repurposed the cardboard for something else… such as building a fort with their child.

Combined, 1 in 10 Canadian households either threw the box in the garbage (6%) or burned it (4%).