Numlock Sunday: Kate Lindsay breaks down the packaging supply chain

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Kate Lindsay, who wrote “Why your small goods come in gigantic boxes” for the BBC. Here's what I wrote about it:

Over the past two decades, paper packaging volumes are up 65 percent. Now, the good news is that more and more of those boxes are made from ex-boxes and ex-ex-boxes, thanks to the versatility of paper pulp. Lock, stock and barrel, about 54 percent of pulp used to make paper packaging was recycled paper, 43 percent is made from new forest fiber, and just 3 percent is made from alternatives like wheat straw and bagasse. The fear is that we’ll pave paradise and make it a cardboard box, but all told, paper packaging is but a fragment of actual deforestation and it’s probably the plastic air sacs we should be worried about.

We spoke about challenges in the supply chain, packaging philosophy, and some of the latest advances in cardboard alternatives.

Lindsay can be found at