Stone paper, FSC cardboard or recycled cardboard: which one really has the lowest CO2?

We get this question weekly. Someone is comparing their shipping packaging and looking for honest numbers. They don't want marketing language, they want LCA data. We do that here, with sources and an honest comparison. Plus the conclusions that aren't always in our favour, because no material wins in every scenario.

What an LCA tells us, and what it doesn't

LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment. It's a methodology for mapping a product's environmental impact across its full lifetime: raw material extraction, production, transport, use, and end-of-life. An LCA gives you numbers for CO2 emissions, water use, energy use, ecotoxicity, and more.

Important: an LCA is about one scenario. Change the number of reuse cycles, the transport, or the end-of-life, and the numbers change too. That's why no single LCA works as universal truth. You always compare in context.

In this article we look at one scenario: a shipping packaging used to deliver one parcel from A to B. We calculate per shipment, averaged over the full lifetime of the material.

The three candidates

FSC cardboard, single-use. The industry standard. Wood pulp from sustainably managed forests, produced in European paper mills, into the paper waste stream after one use. Sometimes cardboard gets reused 5 to 6 times as an order box by some consumers, but the average parcel shipment is thrown out after unboxing.

Recycled cardboard, single-use. Similar to FSC structurally, but the pulp is made from old paper that has cycled through paper recycling. Slightly less energy in production, but fibres can only recycle 5 to 7 cycles before becoming too short for paper. After that it becomes insulation material or fuel.

Stone paper, reusable. Calcium carbonate plus recycled HDPE as binder. Fully tree-free. Designed for 25 reuse cycles with BOXO deposit. End of life, returned, ground, processed back into stone paper.

The numbers per kg of material

For honesty: this is data from public LCA sources, averaged over European production. Different manufacturers have different numbers, so reckon with a 10 to 20 percent margin.

Metric	FSC cardboard	Recycled cardboard	Stone paper
CO2 in production	1,300 g/kg	850 g/kg	432 g/kg
Water in production	50,000 L/ton	20,000 L/ton	30 L/ton
Energy in production	high (reference)	30 percent lower	85 percent lower
Tree use	yes	recycled	no
Recyclable	5 to 7 cycles	5 to 7 cycles	unlimited grinding

Stone paper wins decisively on water, energy and tree use. On CO2 in production stone paper also wins, with 67 percent less emission than FSC cardboard, but the win is less spectacular than the other figures suggest.

The numbers per shipment, that's what counts

The picture differs per kg. But you don't ship kilos, you ship packages. And then you start averaging across lifetime.

An average Stonepacker box of 90 grams, reused 25 times, costs about 0.03 kg CO2 per shipment. An average FSC cardboard shipping box of 200 grams, used once, costs 0.42 kg CO2 per shipment. Recycled cardboard sits in between at about 0.18 kg per shipment.

In other words, per shipment, stone paper is about 14 times less CO2 than single-use FSC cardboard, and 6 times less than recycled cardboard.

The caveat we don't forget to mention

The numbers assume 25 reuse cycles. What if your Stonepacker only goes 10 times? Or 5? Our internal data shows the BOXO system landing on average 22 returns for box, and 28 for envelope. That's higher than we conservatively calculate. But if your setup keeps it in rotation only 8 times, you end up at 0.12 kg CO2 per shipment. Still 3.5 times better than FSC, but less absurd than the 14x in the optimal scenario.

The other way: recycled cardboard is strong when you set up a closed loop for it, like a deposit system for order boxes. Then the numbers can land in the same range. We don't see this often in practice because deposit for disposable cardboard hasn't taken off in NL, but it could.

So which do you pick

We're not objective, so take this with a grain of salt. But if you look purely at average environmental impact per shipment in the Dutch market in 2026, the order is:

Reusable stone paper > Recycled cardboard (closed loop) > Recycled cardboard single-use > FSC cardboard single-use.

Nobody picks one-on-one between these options. A typical webshop has a mix. Our customers deploy Stonepacker for primary shipping, and keep recycled cardboard for packing fillers and internal logistics.

What to do with these numbers

Three things.

One, ask your supplier for their LCA. Not to show off, but to compare. If someone sells "sustainable cardboard" without numbers, you know enough.

Two, calculate it for your specific flow. How many shipments, what distance, what end-of-life. An LCA tool like 2.0 LCA Consultants or MOYU's own calculator (on request from us) helps with that.

Three, don't get paralysed. If you currently use single-use FSC cardboard, switching to recycled cardboard is already a major step. It doesn't have to be reusable stone paper immediately. But if you're going to redesign a logistics flow anyway, pick the option you'll still consider best practice in 5 years.

Want to see our LCA numbers for your use case? Request a sample and we'll send the dossier along. No sales pitch, just the data.