Cardboard recycling for businesses

Cardboard goes one of two ways. Loose flattened card in a wheeled bin, which you pay to have collected. Or baled card, which can earn a rebate once your volumes justify a baler. Published mill prices put baled cardboard at £80 to £99 per tonne for May 2026, before haulage and processing come off (letsrecycle.com).

We arrange collection through licensed carriers. The price on your quote is the carrier's rate plus our margin, shown before you sign. Bins come with the service. If your cardboard already prices well for your volumes, we say so and you stay put.

Loose cardboard collection

Loose card runs in wheeled bins. Most retail and warehouse sites use the 1100 litre, or an FEL once volumes outgrow it. Lift frequency follows your delivery days.

Baled cardboard and rebates

A baler presses card into blocks dense enough for a mill to buy. One UK carrier publishes a mill-size bale as 100cm by 120cm by 80cm. The minimum weight is 400kg. That carrier says it has seen rebates between £50 and £140 per tonne over the previous twelve months (Cawleys, checked 10 August 2026). That is what the bale sells for, not what lands in your account. Haulage and the carrier's margin come off first.

Loose flat-packed card is still paid for, at a lower rate than baled material. Contaminated bales can attract a charge instead, because someone has to break them open and re-sort. Whether a baler earns its keep depends on your volume and the floor space it takes. We go through that with you.

The rules

In England, Simpler Recycling makes paper and card a separate stream from plastic, metal and glass. It has applied to workplaces with 10 or more full-time equivalent employees since 31 March 2025. Smaller workplaces have until 31 March 2027 (GOV.UK, updated 3 October 2025). Flatten it and keep it dry, because a bin full of air costs the same to empty. Tape and plastic inserts come out, and card with food or paint on it goes in general waste (Recycle Now, checked 10 August 2026). Rules elsewhere in the UK differ.

Your collection is made by CARRIER + EA PERMIT — Kev to supply. Section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 makes checking that registration your responsibility as well as ours. Complete a waste transfer note for each load leaving your premises and keep it for two years (GOV.UK, updated 5 February 2025).

Tell us your streams at business waste collection. Everything else we arrange sits on commercial waste.