> But no widely available shipping or packaging material can match cardboard’s recyclability, which hovers annually between 90 and 91 percent.
This begs the question: what is cardboard being recycled into?
Anyone who has worked retail and used the baler can attest to the sheer amount of cardboard that comes into a building, gets de-boxed and then goes right back out in the back of a semi-truck trailer. Most of the cardboard recycling isn't being done by consumers, it's done by businesses.
On the other hand, it was easier to re-use the crates.
On the third hand, the empty wooden crates took up a lot of space to be shipped back, which required a lot more fuel and labor to re-use them rather than recycling the cardboard.
So on net, cardboard is a big positive. We may come up with a replacement for cardboard in the future that would be an even bigger positive.
Wooden crates also have a lot more mass than cardboard, hence would require much more energy to move.