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Filta’s New Sustainability Initiative Gives Amazon Boxes a Second Life

In the United States, every year more than 80 billion corrugated boxes are used, and the average household throws away more than 9,000 pieces of cardboard. In the U.K., around five billion corrugated boxes are used annually, adding up to about 83 per person.

As part of its Environmental Social Governance (ESG) commitments, Filta set a goal to do its part and reduce this type of cardboard waste and get employees on board as well. During the 2021 holiday season, the Filta Group Inc. headquarters in Orlando launched an initiative to recycle shipping boxes and formalized a program to encourage employees to bring in their Amazon (or other shipping) boxes from home so Filta could reuse them in outgoing shipments to franchisees.

Troy Edwards, Filta Group’s warehouse and technical supervisor, came up the brilliant idea to not only reuse cardboard shipping boxes from its distribution center, but ask all employees to bring in their own boxes from home. The holiday season only amplified the ongoing pandemic trend of online ordering, and shipping has surged. Filta’s Reuse and Recycle initiative was good timing to help reduce cardboard box waste. In the first week of the program, 33% of all outgoing shipments were made in reused boxes.

Recycling just one ton of cardboard can save more than nine cubic yards of landfill space, and Filta is doing its part with this Orlando-based program. Overall, data revealed through its proprietary Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) showed Filta saved a whopping 26,500 tonnes of carbon in 2020 which is the equivalent of planting 1.46 million trees. The box Reuse and Recycle initiative will help bolster that number, further move toward the brand’s Net Zero by 2035 goal, and also add its support for two of the United Nation’s publicly stated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): “Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production” and “Goal 13: Climate Action.”

Click below to watch the interview with Troy to find out more about his Reuse and Recycle initiative.

For more information on Filta’s ESG commitments, visit www.gofilta.com/esg