Written by P. Whitfield, Yard Lead
Walk into our re-tape area and the first thing you will notice is the smell of damp craft paper. We use water-activated gummed paper tape exclusively — no plastic — and visitors who know the industry always ask why. The short answer is that plastic tape is a downstream contaminant that poisons the OCC recycling stream, and we cannot in good conscience send a box back into circulation if the tape on it is going to make the next recycler’s job harder.
The recycling stream argument.
When a box with plastic tape gets baled and sold to a paper mill, the plastic does not come off in the pulping process. It ends up in the screening rejects, costs the mill money to remove, and reduces the value of the bale by a small but real amount. Multiply this across millions of tons of OCC and the loss adds up. Paper tape, by contrast, recycles cleanly — it is just paper and starch glue.
The performance argument.
Water-activated tape actually bonds to the corrugated fiber instead of sitting on top of it like plastic tape does. A properly applied paper tape seal is more secure than plastic in high-load applications, which is exactly why most heavy-duty shippers use it.
The cost argument.
Per-yard, paper tape is more expensive than plastic. But per-box-sealed-properly, paper tape uses less material because you do not need to overlap as many strips. We did the math three years ago and the cost difference came out to about 1.5 cents per box, which we cheerfully absorb.
The aesthetic argument.
Honestly, paper tape just looks better. It blends into the kraft surface of the box. When you stack two hundred re-taped gaylords on a pallet they look like a serious operation, not a hardware store haul.