Cardboard Availability Bias

We just moved our youngest into an apartment, and it left us with a mountain of cardboard. The Amazon truck shows up at our house almost every day. More cardboard. The global economy causes more shipments around the world. More cardboard.

We have to use more cardboard now than we did 30 years ago, right?

Here are the facts:

U.S. corrugated-box shipments were about 373 billion square feet in 1995 and 374 billion square feet in 2025. Unchanged.

Doesn’t feel that way, though, does it?

That’s availability bias.

“Availability bias is our tendency to judge how common or likely something is based on how easily examples of it come to mind.”

We see mountains of cardboard in and around our apartments and houses, so we assume we’re using more cardboard.

Just the facts, ma’am.