BRUSSELS –FEFCO is proud to announce the new cradle-to-grave carbon impact of corrugated packaging at 538kg CO2 equivalents per tonne of product.

The carbon footprint covers the cradle-to-grave carbon impact of corrugated packaging, taking account of fossil and biogenic greenhouse gas emissions and removals and emissions from direct land use change.

The data for production of paper & board and conversion into corrugated boxes were sourced from the 2018 European Database for Corrugated Board Life Cycle Studies, organized by FEFCO (European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers) and CCB (Cepi ContainerBoard).

The 2018 result reflects significant improvements to the methodology, and it is not appropriate to compare it with figures from previous years. However, if the 2018 carbon impact is calculated using the methodology applied earlier, then the result would show an 11% improvement for 2018 compared to 2015.

Corrugated board packaging has two unique positive attributes. It is based on renewable raw material, using as a starting point the capacity of forests to capture CO2. By recycling the used packaging into new paper & board, it delays this CO2 from returning to the atmosphere.

FEFCO (European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers) represents the interests of the European Corrugated Board Manufacturers. Headquartered in Brussels, FEFCO has 17 Association members, all European national corrugated packaging organizations. The role of the Federation is to investigate economic, financial, technical and marketing issues of interest to the corrugated packaging Industry, to analyze all factors which may influence the industry, and to promote and develop its image.

Europe’s corrugated industry in Europe makes about 43.9 billion square metres of board per year, enough to cover Denmark. It has 401 companies, 700 plants and accounts for 100,000 jobs. Corrugated is already a complete, high-performance material design, and delivery system, with thousands of possible combinations of board types, depth, weight, adhesives, and coatings. The average box today is more than 5% lighter than 15 years ago and contains around 7% more recycled material.