Have a word! Students gather to support campaign to get ‘cartonboard’ into the Oxford English Dictionary
27 September 2021
Oxford is well known as the seat of learning and its libraries are home to over 12 million books and manuscripts. However, few as large as the giant cartonboard dictionary that landed on the city’s streets this week, as part of an ongoing campaign to get the word ‘cartonboard’ officially recognised in the Oxford English Dictionary. The larger-than-life five feet tall dictionary is made entirely of renewable, recyclable and biodegradable cartonboard.
In December 2019, the giant dictionary – complete with open ‘pages’ featuring a definition of cartonboard - was unveiled at the Charing Cross Library in London. Yet nearly two years on, and despite the fact that just 12% of UK citizens surveyed would choose a product packaged in plastic over cartonboard, the word remains excluded from the dictionary.
Cartonboard is a paper-based material used to make cartons which in turn package and protect products ranging from breakfast cereals to frozen foods, to pharmaceuticals to smart phones! The paper fibres that make up cartonboard come from a renewable resource – trees grown in sustainably managed forests – and can be recycled up to 25 times , making it the most environmentally-friendly packaging material.
