Solid Online Sales Are Good News for Washington Papermakers

By Don Brunell
The Chronicle
January 2, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US West

Curbside recycling bins are packed with cardboard shipping boxes from Christmas online shopping. The uptick in consumer shipments is not only good news for the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and UPS, but our nation’s papermakers. …USA Today reported “despite thousands of store closings this year, Americans supplied a final flurry of spending to give retailers their best holiday sales since 2011.” The National Retail Federation expects the total to be roughly $682 billion. The good news is most of those shipping boxes are headed back to paper mills instead of landfills. The volume is huge. Amazon, which accounts for about 40 percent of the online sales, uses 1.6 million boxes each day, according to MRBOXonline.

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