Lot's Wife Edition 4 2016

Where do our
pizza boxes
come from?
SCIENCE
By Brittany Wetherspoon
Illustration by Lily Greenwood
We use cardboard and paper-based packaging so often
in our daily lives, but many people do not know where
it all comes from. Why should you care? It is okay if you recycle
right? What if I were to tell you that your Friday night pizza
box was actually the product of the process that was killing
thousands?
In the beginning, it just started with the universally known
fact; that cardboard is a product of trees. I interviewed several
customers and workers at the local pizza shop, in hopes that
the consumers and workers of pizza would know which trees
those were. However, not a single person was able to clarify
further than “it just comes from trees.”
Many people believe that manufacturers of paper and
paper-based products are sourcing their trees from plantation
farms, trees specifically grown for the purpose of cutting
down. Whilst most international companies do abide by laws
set by councils, such as the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and
the Forest Stewardship Council (F.S.C), many of them do not.
Consequently, this means that many of your favourite internationally
packaged brands may actually be packaged in the skin
of native forests around the world, forests that thousands are
fighting governments to protect.
The deforestation of tropical rainforests, such as the
Amazon, is contributing to global warming which is increasing
at a dangerous rate. It is also the cause for much loss of
livelihoods for thousands, and death of thousands more native
animals. This is what volunteers from the World Wildlife
Foundation (WWF) are dedicated to stopping.
There was an undercurrent of mystery when I was investigating
the origins of cardboard. I called multiple companies
with no answer, and received only one reply to all my emails
sent. The reply was from an art branded paper company that
shall remain nameless, who stated to believe in my mission to
encourage readers to question the norm but politely refused
to, as doing so “would reveal our recipe to competitors”. Why
should it be so hard, as a consumer in Australian society which
claims to be greener than most, to be able to find out where my
packaging is sourced from? It made me question what they had
to hide?
The answer was the Amazon.
The South American rainforest, that is widely known to be
the largest source of the world’s oxygen, is in your pizza box.
One of my only successful interviews was with the local
pizza shop owner. Monash students have been coming to his
shops for years, so he jumped on board with the investigation
when I came to him. Within 2 weeks, he called me with his
results.
His supplier ships from Egypt, but according to the supplier,
the wood is cut, pulped and shaped in Brazil in three forms.
The first, pine wood from their plantation, is Australian Pine.
Secondly, all that recycled cardboard you and the rest of the
world recycle is rotated through the packaging system, being
pulped down again but at a lower quality than the original pine.
And finally, thousands of pizza boxes are being made with the
logs of the Amazonian Rain Forest.
Are we really okay with not knowing, with accepting what
has been our everyday normal without questioning the origins?
I don’t think so. We are university students, and learning
about and investigating our world is what we are here to do.
We can protect the future of our Earth, just by starting small
with pizza boxes.
But we can’t do it whilst being in the dark.
It all starts with a simple question.
42 | Lot’s Wife