Cardboard is
probably the largest recyclable stream your facility produces, and it is one of
the very few that can pay you instead of costing you. The difference sits in
the details. Paper mills buy old corrugated containers against a written
specification, and your load either meets it or it does not.
Two facilities
can ship identical tonnage of identical boxes and open very different checks.
The gap is almost never volume. It is what else rode along in the trailer, and
how the material was handled before it got there.
What OCC Cardboard Actually Is
OCC stands for
old corrugated containers, also called old corrugated cardboard. It is the
shipping box material built from a wavy fluted layer glued between two flat
liners. Mills buy those long kraft fibers because
they can be pulped and reformed into new containerboard again and again.
Plenty of brown
paper is not OCC. Cereal boxes, shoe boxes, file folders, and retail display
cartons are boxboard or chipboard. They are made from shorter, weaker fiber;
they pulp differently, and they carry their own trade grade. Letting them drift
into your corrugated stream is one of the quickest ways to knock a load down a
grade, which is why commercial
recycling programs that pay well focus on separation at the point
of generation.
What Good OCC Looks Like On The Dock
Clean OCC is
corrugated only, dry, flattened, and free of anything that is not paper. Normal
amounts of tape, labels, and staples are acceptable, since mills screen those
out during pulping. Nobody expects your receiving team to peel every box. OCC
recycling is graded on what the load is mostly made of, not on perfection.
The
specification most buyers write into their contracts is ReMA Item 11, Old
Corrugated Containers, long published under the ISRI name. It defines the grade
as corrugated containers having liners of test liner or kraft, with prohibitive
materials not exceeding 1 percent, and outthrows plus prohibitives not
exceeding 5 percent.
Those two terms
carry the whole system. Prohibitives are materials that damage mill equipment
or ruin the finished sheet. Outthrows are papers unsuitable for the grade but
not destructive. You get a little room on outthrows. You get almost none on
prohibitives.
What Gets An OCC Load Rejected Or Downgraded
Published buyer
specifications name the same offenders repeatedly. A representative
prohibited list for OCC includes bottles, cans, rubber, dirt, rocks, styrofoam,
foil, metals, plastics, glass, wood, poly-laminated board, and wax-coated
corrugated.
Four of those
earn a closer look, because they enter the stream during normal operations
without anyone deciding to put them there.
Wax and Poly-Coated Boxes
Produce boxes,
frozen food cases, and some meat cartons are treated so they survive ice and
humidity. That coating will not repulp. It surfaces as specks and stickies in
the finished sheet, and a mill that finds it treats it as a prohibitive rather
than an outthrow.
Food And Grease Residue
A grease stain
on a few boxes will not sink a load. Sauce, oil, or product spilled across a
full pallet will, and it brings pests and odor into your baling area on the way
there.
Plastic Film, Strapping, And Foam
Pallet wrap and
poly banding stripped off inbound freight tend to land in whatever container is
closest, and at most docks the closest container is the cardboard one.
Boxboard And Mixed Paper
Office paper,
chipboard cartons, and paper towel cores are the most common outthrows in a
commercial cardboard recycling stream. They are also the single biggest reason
facilities never reach the premium grade described below.
Moisture Is The Contaminant Nobody Weighs
Water costs you
twice. Wet fiber inflates your scale weight, which looks like a win right up
until the buyer applies a moisture deduction and pays you for tonnage you never
really delivered. Then it attacks the fiber itself, because soaked corrugated
loses the strength that made it worth buying, and a wet bale sitting in a
warehouse starts growing mold within days.
One rained-on
pallet in an otherwise clean trailer can pull a full load down a grade.
Cardboard that lives in an open-top roll-off outdoors takes that risk every
time the weather turns.
The Grade Numbers Behind Your Recycling Rebate
Two OCC grades
are worth knowing by number, because your rebate is calculated against one of
them.
•
Item 11, standard OCC, is the grade most commercial
generators ship. Prohibitives cap at 1 percent. Outthrows plus prohibitives cap
at 5 percent.
•
Item 12, Double-Sorted Old Corrugated or DS OCC, is
corrugated generated from supermarkets or industrial and commercial facilities,
specially sorted to exclude boxboard, off-shore corrugated, plastic, and wax.
Prohibitives cap at one-half of 1 percent. Outthrows plus prohibitives cap at 2
percent.
DS OCC pays a
premium over standard OCC because mills can run it with less cleaning. Reaching
it realistically requires cardboard from a single controlled source, which is
exactly the profile of most packaging
and distribution centers and printing and box
shops. If your corrugated never mixes with office paper or retail
packaging, the premium grade is on the table.
What A Downgrade Actually Costs
Buyers publish
this, and the figures are worth reading before you write contamination off as a
rounding error. One processor's OCC specification lays out the schedule
plainly. A load with excessive outthrows is reclassified as OCC #2 and paid at
market price less $25 per ton. A load with excessive contaminants drops to OCC
Processing at market price less $75 per ton. A rejected load is charged back at
$125 per ton, with a $250 minimum flat fee.
That same
specification also governs the bale itself. Every bale must carry at least four
wires in 10 to 13 gauge, weigh at least 800 pounds, ship without pallets, and
stay intact through loading, transport, offloading, storage, and stacking. Bale
integrity is part of the grade, not a courtesy.
Your own
buyer's numbers will differ. The structure will not. There is a price for clean
material, a deduction for sloppy material, and an invoice for bad material.
Does A Cardboard Baler Improve OCC Quality?
A baler does
not clean cardboard. What it does is change nearly every condition that lets
cardboard get dirty in the first place.
•
It creates a handling step. Someone has to feed the
machine, so someone sees the material before it ships. Loose cardboard
tossed into a roll-off is inspected by no one. Understanding how a baler compresses
material makes it clear why that feed point doubles as a sort point.
•
It moves the stream indoors. A baler lives inside the
building, so corrugated stays under roof instead of collecting rain in an open
container.
•
It gives the stream a defined container. Material that
goes into the chamber is cardboard, and material that goes into the trash is
not. That physical separation does more for cleanliness than any sign posted on
a wall.
•
It produces material a buyer can grade. Baled OCC
cardboard can be inspected, weighed, stacked, and priced, and OCC bales carry
far more fiber per trailer than loose material ever will.
Sizing decides
how much of that benefit you actually capture. A vertical
baler fits operations producing a few hundred pounds a day. Higher volumes
move to closed-door
and auto-tie horizontal balers, which turn out consistent mill-size bales
continuously and pair with an infeed conveyor. The full range of recycling baler
configurations comes down to daily volume, available floor space, and how
much operator time you can spare.
How To Keep Your OCC Clean
None of this
requires a new program. It takes six habits at the dock.
•
Give cardboard its own clearly marked container, and
position it closer to receiving than the trash container is. People use
whatever is nearest.
•
Keep the baler and the staging area under roof, and
keep finished bales off wet concrete.
•
Train receiving staff on the specific items that do not
belong: wax-coated produce boxes, poly-lined bags, pallet wrap, and steel or
plastic banding.
•
Bale on a schedule instead of letting corrugated pile
up loose, because piles are where contamination collects and where moisture
finds it.
•
Walk the container before the haul. Two minutes spent
looking at the top layer catches most of what would otherwise cost you a
downgrade.
•
Stay current on baler repair and
maintenance. A machine producing loose, underweight, or badly tied bales
creates a grading problem even when the fiber inside is spotless.
Facilities
running high enough volume to justify it go further, adding OCC screens and sort
lines that pull outthrows before material ever reaches the baler.
Building A Better OCC Program With Crigler Enterprises
OCC quality is as much an equipment problem as a training problem. If your bales are coming in
light, your loads are getting downgraded, or your cardboard is still going out
loose in a roll-off, the fix usually starts with matching the right machine to
your daily volume. Crigler Enterprises has sized and installed balers for recycling operations
since 1972, and we back every machine with the largest service fleet in the
Southeast.
We are a
licensed and bonded authorized distributor for Harris American, MAX-PAK, and
BACE across Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, handling design, installation,
repair, maintenance, refurbishment, and PLC upgrades.
Call
us today or contact us online, and tell us what you generate in a day, and we will tell
you what it takes to bale it clean.
