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.