Cardboard Recycling Challenge for Fast-Growing Healthy Foods Supermarket

Founded in 2002, this retail grocery store chain specializes in making natural foods affordable and accessible to everyone, focusing on farm-fresh produce, and healthy and organic options. As part of its mission to minimize environmental impact, these are often locally sourced, even as the company grew to span more than 23 states across the United States.

Millions of customers choose its stores because it stocks food grown and produced in ways that are healthier for people and the planet: organically grown and plant-based options that lower the environmental impact of the food consumed. That same approach also extends to its grocery packaging: Eggs are sold only in fiberboard or other recyclable containers; many items are unpackaged; meat trays were switched to recyclable PET materials. The chain emphasizes nonprepackaged products and recycling in its stores as its go-to-market strategy.

Working with IP for recycling cardboard boxes, also known as old corrugated containers (OCC), the client needed a vendor that could expand recycling services over time.

“IP developed an enhanced recycling program and has grown with the client since our partnership began in 2014,” said Lyndee Miller, IP National Account Manager. “IP grew with them.”

It began with behind-the-store service at 84 stores and 4 distribution centers. These have reduced their overall environmental footprint by expanding the backhaul of bales to the client’s distribution centers as new store locations opened in target markets. “At first we were managing several tons of OCC behind the stores,” said Miller. But that service was costly. IP was able to reduce those fees by suggesting the grocer make backhauls in its own trailers when they were returning to the distribution centers.

There were other problems, as OCC bales arriving at the distribution centers frequently were not properly built, thus breaking apart in transit or processing. To rectify that, said Miller, “The distribution centers have installed IP-owned balers.” While IP continues to collect OCC from behind 54 individual grocery stores, over the past eight years, OCC volume has risen exponentially in tandem with the client’s nonstop expansion.

Now, with their footprint stretching from coast to coast, more than 200 IP trucks a month collect 45,000 tons of OCC annually from six distribution centers.

The grocery retailer has committed to becoming a “zerowaste” company by 2030, with 90 percent of its waste diverted from the landfill. Progress toward this ambitious goal is documented annually in the client’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.

The report covers everything from food-waste recycling to pallet recovery. The report emphasizes the importance of cardboard recycling. IP’s 200 monthly truckloads—nearly 45,000 tons of OCC hauled annually—are delivered to IP or partner mills, which convert them to new packaging.

IP provides tracking data to the report that helps substantiate the client’s recycling efforts. The client’s latest ESG report shows OCC is recycled at a 100 percent rate, and makes up half of the material waste diverted from landfills, nearly outstripping all other categories put together, including plastics and waste food.

“They have their own sustainability data, and we provide data on OCC,” says Miller. “They like that the OCC gets recycled and their vendors buy the new boxes. It’s definitely contributing to the circularity of paper-based packaging.”