Dieboards Can be Recycled Instead of Landfilled Paul Pirkle, President, Mid America Paper Recycling, Chicago, IL, USA
Many packaging companies recycle their corrugated and paperboard waste. But can package converters who make corrugated shipping boxes and paperboard folding cartons recycle their hardwood cutting dieboards? One packaging converter has done so, which streamlined its operation and improved its sustainability efforts with an item often considered “unrecyclable.” Custom carton/corrugated packaging converter and designer Batavia Container Inc., Batavia, IL, USA recently worked on a project with Chicago-based recycler Mid America Paper Recycling to divert several tons of solid waste from landfills, channeling the hardwood boards instead to a recycler for reprocessing and reuse. According to The Packaging Association of Canada, more packaging manufacturers are implementing practices such as lightweighting, downsizing, recovering materials and recycled content, composting or recycling in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy and waste and improve their companies’ economics and work environments. This is being driven by an understanding that most recovered materials can replace virgin materials, resulting in landfill avoidance and potentially huge energy savings.
An essential component required by the diecutting industry, dieboards form the basis of a flat or rotary cutting die into which the contours of packaging are lasered. Then, the cutting and creasing rules are positioned and finally the appropriate rubber ejection material is applied. Family owned Batavia Container relies on dieboards daily. The company converts folding paperboard cartons and corrugated shipping cases at three manufacturing facilities— one in Batavia, IL, USA another in Bedford Park, IL, USA and a third in Itasca, IL, USA. The plants print and diecut consumer and value-added specialty packaging, point-of-purchase displays, slotted corrugated shipping cases and offer custom packaging design and corrugated manufacturing.
Running Out of Room Batavia Container’s production facilities were storing wooden dieboards for so many customers, they were running out of storage space. “We have purchased, utilized and disposed of thousands of cutting dies over the 60-plus-year history of the company,” points out Paul Mansour, Director of Account Development at Batavia Container. “As it is, the life of a cutting die can range from a onetime use for a custom point-of-purchase display to regular
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This article is reproduced with permission from the International Association of Diecutting and Diemaking's monthly magazine, The Cutting Edge. The IADD is an international trade association serving diecutters, diemakers and industry suppliers worldwide. IADD provides conferences, education and training programs, a monthly magazine, online resource library of 750+ technical articles, industry experts to answer technical questions, publications and training manuals, recommended specifications, online used equipment marketplace, videos and more. IADD also presents Odyssey, a bi-annual trade show and innovative concept in technical training featuring a hands-on Techshop where training programs come alive in an actual working diemaking and diecutting facility inside the exhibit area. Visit www.iadd.org or call 1-815-455-7519 for more information.
use hundreds of times. They can last for 10 to 20 years.” The question is, how to dispose of obsolete dieboards, which is an industry-wide issue, Mansour affirms. “Our industry typically puts obsolete and old cutting dies in a dumpster, and the contents end up in the landfill.” Mid America Paper Recycling team members often visit manufacturing facilities and are asked if they recycle diecutting boards or know how to recycle them on a largescale basis. We have been investigating recycling dieboards for some time. We are often asked if we can recycle the wood. Batavia Container asked if we could possibly recycle their dieboards. We knew there had to be a market for the obsolete boards. They are a substantial amount of waste. We began asking reprocessing vendors if they would accept obsolete dieboards and found a recycler who can repurpose them. In late 2021, Batavia Container decided the time was right to initiate the dieboard project. With assistance from Mid America Paper Recycling, Batavia Container was able to recycle tons of the obsolete dieboards, repurposing the waste into lawn and garden mulch and other wood-based products. “We worked with Mid America to have the old tooling recovered and to reuse both the dieboard wood and the metal,” Mansour remembers. The project took place in November, 2021. Mid America arranged to pick up the tooling from Batavia Container using our own trailer and hauled them to a processor. The processor used a familiar recycling process, but it’s new for this kind of application. The boards were sent through a high-tech wood chipper that can separate the metal rule from the wood. The resulting wood chips can be reused as mulch and other wood-based products. Recycling the dieboards also allowed Batavia Container to free up valuable floor space at its converting plants and reduce labor. Most importantly, “preventing old cutting dies from ending up in a landfill will help all of us,” Mansour summarizes. The manufacturing operations of a typical paperboard converter or containerboard plant can generate thousands of tons of pre-consumer, high-grade recyclable corrugated,
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fiberboard, production trim waste and paperboard waste annually. This recycled waste can generate significant savings and perhaps revenues for a company. Tons of the material were recycled in one trip, versus disposing it in a dumpster, week in, week out, through the year. The savings can be potentially significant, just in indirect costs alone. Dieboard wood is hard. It stays in the ground for years and take a very long time to decompose. There are several challenges and shortcomings in dealing with recycling, labor and waste transportation. Landfilling dieboards doesn’t meet anyone’s environmental goals or help reduce costs. When Batavia chose to recycle the boards, they were rewarded by a significant value-added contribution to sustainability. Paul Pirkle is President of Mid America Paper Recycling, a fourthgeneration leader in the recycling industry that provides robust environmental solutions and value for partners ranging from small businesses to large multinational corporations. Its program features a benchmarking waste audit, consultation services, documentation, quantification and presentation of the specific and overall values that can be realized from customer waste streams. If you would like to learn more about Mid America Paper Recycling, visit www.midamericapaper.com. Paul Pirkle can be reached at 1-773890-5454 or by email at ppirkle@midamericapaper.com. To learn more about Batavia Container, visit www.bataviacontainer.com.
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