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How is corrugated cardboard made? What exactly is “recycled paper” and how is it manufactured and processed? Let's start from the beginning: our vertically integrated circular economy.
Trevikart GreenDesign’s visionary project started from a very simple idea, that Italy is a country with few real forests, but very many “urban forests”, i.e. cities that recycle large quantities of paper. It is not by chance that Italy is estimated to have exceeded the European target for paper and cardboard recycling for 2035 (85%) by a good 15 years as it reached 87% in 2020.
It is quick and easy to find the raw materials for our cardboard furnishings and displays because we do not have to import them from abroad. On the contrary, we collect waste material already present in local communities and put it back into circulation in the form of “green” design objects in a vertically integrated circular economy.
The origin of the recycled paper we use to make our cardboard furniture: from the pulp to the paper mills
As a business unit in the Pro-Gest Group (a leader in its sector and with its products in the Italian and European paper industry for 50 years), Trevikart GreenDesign is fully able to guarantee quality, transparency and efficiency.
With its 28 plants, which include six paper mills, each year the Pro-Gest Group gathers together 1.5 million tons of paper for recycling from separate waste collection.
That paper and cardboard then goes through a series of strict checks and selections in the sorting platforms. This is needed because impurities such as plastic, metal and other materials, inadvertently thrown away by both public and private users, escape detection in the separate collection.
At this point, the waste paper is sent to paper mills and pressed into bales. Here it is processed inside a water tank known as a “pulper”, where paddles separate the fibres of the compound into basic fibres.
The resulting pulp is filtered further and, once all treatments have been completed, the fibrous pulp can be used to start the actual paper production process.
Corrugated cardboard as your best friend for a greener world
From the Paper Mills to the Corrugators. The fibrous paper pulp is fed into a drying cycle consisting of excess water draining tables and hot cylinders that reach temperatures of over 150° C (until the wet residue has evaporated completely).
Natural starch is added to increase the strength properties of the recycled paper that is obtained, according to the intended type of use. This process results in large roles called reels that are cut and prepared according to the heights required by the corrugator that will produce the cardboard.
The reels of paper are then delivered to the corrugators where they are finally transformed into sheets of corrugated cardboard, a 100% biodegradable and recyclable material that we also make 100% customisable and “Made in Italy” handcrafted (read the article Is eco-friendly printing on recycled paper really possible? or visit the section Custom Made on our website).
Trevikart GreenDesign a green and verdant enterprise
At Trevikart GreenDesign, we believe in the innovative potential of recycled paper, which is why we make furnishings and displays from corrugated cardboard, sometimes combined with other materials such as MDF, poplar plywood, eco-leather and glass.
The different types of flutes that can be combined give life to extremely versatile products, which in turn can be used, developed and customised in endless ways thanks to cutting-edge digital technologies for printing and cutting and also to our people, who are constantly seeking new finishes and creative designs. Because cardboard is not only recycled, recyclable and inexpensive, it can also be “usefully beautiful”.
