Citation: Ketkale, H.; Simske, S. A LifeCycle Analysis and Economic Cost Analysis of Corrugated Cardboard Box Reuse and Recycling in the United States. Resources 2023, 12, 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/ resources12020022 Academic Editor: Carlo Ingrao Received: 24 December 2022 Revised: 24 January 2023 Accepted: 25 January 2023 Published: 1 February 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). resources Article A LifeCycle Analysis and Economic Cost Analysis of Corrugated Cardboard Box Reuse and Recycling in the United States Harshwardhan Ketkale and Steven Simske * Systems Engineering Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA * Correspondence: steve.simske@colostate.edu; Tel.: +1-970-241-5692 Abstract: Manufacturing of a product such as a corrugated cardboard box (CCB) includes the extraction of a variety of raw materials in addition to supply chain efforts to get the raw materials to the industry. Conducting a LifeCycle Assessment (LCA) gives the carbon emission of each phase of the product and a quantitative estimate of the overall product carbon footprint and its effect on the environment. This gives impetus to recommendations for improving the phases of the lifecycle to minimize carbon emissions. The proposed waste management method in this paper is the “reuse” method instead of recycling or landfilling the CCB and, in so doing, focusing only on reducing carbon emissions in the manufacturing phase. The paper examines if the incremental cost of reusing the CCBs is less than the environmental and economic cost of reducing the extraction and supply chain of raw materials. This paper uses LCA to evaluate the carbon emission in each phase of the lifecycle of a typical 1 kg corrugated cardboard box in the United States. Carbon emission for the proposed “reuse” phase is also calculated, and the results are compared. This paper also explores the economic feasibility of the proposed “reuse” method that incentivizes the general population to reuse the CCBs instead of recycling or landfilling them. Economic tools such as willingness-to-pay vs. marginal cost curves and benefit-cost analyses are used to evaluate economic feasibility. The results indicate that the “reuse” method for CCBs is economically and environmentally feasible. It also supports the approach of using analytics, economics, and LCA to create a model that can be used for other products and processes as an evaluative process to determine if businesses can benefit from the reduction (or removal) of material extraction costs from the supply chain. Keywords: corrugated cardboard box; lifecycle assessment; willingness-to-pay; marginal cost curve; reuse; recycle 1. Introduction The current lifecycle of corrugated cardboard boxes (CCB) starts with the manufactur- ing of the CCBs with raw materials such as hardwood, softwood, and adhesives. These raw materials are collected and transported to the location of the pulp-making operation. The pulp is made out of softwood and hardwood to form fibers which are then combined with recycled fibers to manufacture paper. Next, the manufactured paper is transported to the location of the converting operation. Two types of paper are used in manufacturing the CCBs: liner and medium. CCBs comprise a corrugated board that is made up of three layers of corrugated sheets (an inside liner, an outside liner, and a medium that goes between the two, which is fluted). The corrugated board is formed in the required shape and size of CCBs. Once the CCBs are formed, they are shipped to the required location (e.g., retail stores), where they start their use phase. In this phase, they are mainly used as outer packaging material for the transportation and shipping of goods and products. In the disposal phase, the CCBs are either recycled or landfilled. A huge amount of the supply chain goes into extracting raw materials, such as cutting hardwood and softwood trees and Resources 2023, 12, 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources12020022 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/resources