I f you’d told me over ten years ago that I’d one day build a company out of someone else’s waste, I’d have laughed. Yet here we are. Reuseabox began more than a decade ago, not as some grand environmental mission, but to help my parents keep their small business afloat. Things were tough, and I was hustling and selling whatever I could online through eBay or Gumtree, trying to bring in some extra money. Then came the turning point. A local wedding dress wholesaler had thousands of perfectly good cardboard boxes stacked up in his warehouse. Barney, the warehouse manager, was furious because recycling fees had just gone up. Imagine being told you had to pay to throw away something that looked brand new. That frustration sparked an idea. What if we found another business that wanted the boxes? If it worked, the wholesaler wouldn’t just save money; they’d stop paying for waste altogether. Within days, we had a buyer, literally a few doors down. That single deal turned into £12,000 a year in profit. More importantly, it revealed a bigger truth: across the UK, millions of boxes and materials weren’t worthless; they were just overlooked. Nobody was thinking about keeping them in use. That’s how Reuseabox was born. From Side Hustle to Sustainability Movement A couple of years later, I was still running Reuseabox out of my parents’ garden when my phone rang. On the other end was someone from the environmental team from one of the UK’s largest distribution companies. They wanted to reach net zero and wanted to help achieve that by reusing millions of boxes each month. The only catch? We’d need to prove the environmental savings of reuse over recycling. We had no idea how to do that, but we said yes. That decision led to a partnership with the University of Lincoln, where we carried out the first environmental studies on cardboard reuse in the UK. The findings were clear: something as simple as reusing a box saved trees, carbon, energy, and water on a scale that nobody could ignore. From then on, Reuseabox wasn’t just about selling boxes, it was about showing businesses that profit and purpose could go hand in hand. Why Linear Thinking is no Longer Fit for Purpose Most companies still run on a linear model: take, make, use, and dispose. It’s simple, it’s familiar, and for decades it has powered growth. But it’s a model that’s collapsing under its own weight. Here’s why: • Resource scarcity – We’re consuming natural resources faster than the planet can regenerate them. Paper, timber, and water, all critical to the print and packaging industries, are under unprecedented pressure. • Waste and landfill – In the UK alone, we generate approximately 200 million tonnes of waste each year. Much of it could be reused, but instead it ends up buried or burned. That’s lost value. Why Businesses That Ignore the Circular Economy Will Lose Out ▲ Jack Good, founder of Reuseabox FRESH PERSPECTIVES | JACK GOOD In this edition of Fresh Perspectives, we hear from Jack Good, founder of Reuseabox, who talks about the importance of creating a circular economy in print and other industries around the world The more businesses work together across the value chain, the more impact we can have. The choice for businesses, in print and beyond, is clear 26 Issue 357 - November | December 2025 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk
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