Moving generates a surprising amount of waste in a very short window. A single household move can burn through 60 or more cardboard boxes — most of which get used exactly once before being broken down, recycled if you're diligent, or landfilled if you're not.
The real scale of cardboard waste
Containers and packaging make up the largest single share of municipal solid waste generated in the U.S. — roughly 82 million tons in a recent year, with 67.7 million tons of paper and cardboard specifically entering the waste stream. Cardboard production also relies heavily on tree harvesting, with estimates as high as 8 billion trees cut annually for paper and packaging production combined.
Recycling helps, but it isn't the full answer
Recycling cardboard does cut energy consumption by roughly 75% compared to producing it from raw materials — genuinely meaningful. But recycling only helps after a box has already been manufactured, shipped, used once, and discarded. The EPA's own waste hierarchy ranks reducing and reusing above recycling for exactly this reason: avoiding the resource use in the first place beats capturing part of it back afterward.
Where reusable totes actually win
A plastic moving tote used across dozens of rental cycles has a meaningfully lower carbon footprint per use than a cardboard box that's manufactured, used once, and discarded — the totes simply amortize their production impact across far more moves. Even accounting for the plastic they're made from, reused equipment beats single-use packaging on a per-move basis once you look past the first use.
What this means for your next move
Renting totes instead of buying a stack of cardboard boxes means nothing from your move ends up in a landfill or a recycling bin the week after — the totes go back into rotation for the next customer's move instead. It's a genuinely lower-impact way to move, not just a marketing angle.
Every Nice Totes package is reusable, stackable, and picked up when you're done — nothing to break down or throw away.
View Residential PricingCurious how totes compare on cost too? Read Moving Totes vs. Cardboard Boxes.