Can you recycle a greasy pizza box?

Despite what you may have heard, WestRock and Domino’s say don’t trash that stained corrugated box

Have you heard that greasy pizza boxes aren’t recyclable? Domino’s says that’s not true.

Photo courtesy of Domino's Pizza

Here’s an interesting piece of sustainability news for all of you manufacturers that supply pizza restaurants.

Domino’s and WestRock are encouraging people to toss their empty pizza boxes in the recycling even if they have some grease on them, challenging warnings that only clean boxes can be made into new products.

WestRock, the main corrugated supplier for the global pizza chain, talked with paper mills and studied how dirty used pizza boxes are, concluding that the typical amount of grease and leftover cheese does not affect the quality of a corrugated product containing expected levels of recycled fibers.

Recycling facilities pulled pizza boxes out of their waste streams so WestRock could document grease levels. It would take a higher concentration of grease than you find on a pizza box to interfere with fibers’ bonding ability during the papermaking process, according to WestRock’s study.

Why the confusion over the boxes’ recyclability? Domino’s, which uses 72% recycled content in its boxes, says recycling programs sometimes prohibit pizza boxes to reduce the risk that people will leave uneaten pizza or other food scraps inside, which paper mills prohibit. “Over the years, this has come to be incorrectly interpreted as ‘pizza boxes are not recyclable,’” Domino’s says on its new website to share information about pizza box recycling.

In areas that ban pizza boxes from recycling streams, Domino’s encourages people to call their municipalities to ask them to add the boxes to their collection. About 75% of the U.S. population has recycling programs available for pizza boxes, according to WestRock research estimates.

For more information, visit www.recycling.dominos.com.

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Rose Shilling is a previous managing editor of Food Engineering Magazine. She wrote feature stories on a variety of topics and tracked the food packaging industry. A journalist with an editing background at news services and newspapers, she also has driven editorial projects in health care and higher education.