By luxorphoto @Adobe Stock

Ryan Dezember of The Wall Street Journal tells his readers that one of America’s hottest commodities is probably in your trash bin. He writes:

Paper mills at home and abroad are gobbling up America’s recycled cardboard, driving up prices for old pizza boxes and other corrugated containers that they pulp and make into new packaging.

The price of old corrugated containers, or OCC, surged during the pandemic e-commerce boom and then came crashing down in 2022 when rising interest rates prompted businesses to slow ordering and reduce inventories. Over the past year, though, OCC prices have rebounded, more than tripling in some parts of the country.

The latest rise is being driven by the opening of several new mills that need used cardboard to make fresh containerboard for corrugated shipping boxes and paperboard, which is folded into cereal boxes and coffee cups. Mills are vying for recycled boxes at a time when there are fewer available because of lower cardboard production while businesses were destocking. […}

Several of the largest new containerboard mills that have opened over the past year are in the South, including Domtar’s in Kingsport, Tenn., and Pratt Industries’ in Henderson, Ky.

They are among the more than $7 billion of containerboard-manufacturing investments that have been announced since 2019, according to trade group American Forest & Paper Association. When the last of that batch opens next year, they will cumulatively consume more than 9 million tons of recycled fiber each year.

Read more here.