Local entrepreneur Bob Cannon hopes cardboard goes the way of the dinosaur.

People tend to put on their thinking caps during a recession. Take Jim Henson, for example. During troubling economic times, he invented his world-famous Muppet characters and subsequently launched an entertainment empire. Hewlett-Packard Development Co. also got its start during down times, growing from a $538,000 investment in a garage at the end of the Great Depression.

Most likely, history will repeat itself. We’ll see another Trader Joe’s or MTV get its start during the current tough economy. And there’s a chance that MoveGreen, a Casselberry-based company, just might be a contender.

MoveGreen (www.mymovegreen.com) sprang up last year, and its eco-friendly idea is proving to be popular in both commercial and residential markets.

“The beauty of it is that it’s a simple concept,” says Bob Cannon, co-founder of MoveGreen. “We rent reusable plastic bins as an alternative to the traditional disposable cardboard box and packing tape.”

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Trash Talking

Only about half the cardboard that Americans discard actually gets recycled, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And since the average American moves more than 16 times in a lifetime, all the bubble wrap, Styrofoam peanuts and boxes really add up.

Consider this: If the average person uses 50 cardboard boxes per move, in a lifetime each person runs through about 800 boxes on moves alone.

“When you reuse cardboard boxes, they can last for approximately four moves. However, many times they are discarded after only one move and end up in a landfill,” says Cannon. In comparison, the stronger, more durable plastic bins, or SmartPacks, that MoveGreen rents can be reused several hundred times. After that, they are recycled and made into new bins.

“It just made more sense to use a reusable, environmentally conscious product over the alternative,” says Greg Dalglish, who used MoveGreen products when he moved from Columbia, S.C., to Orlando in October. Better yet, he was pleasantly surprised that the price to rent SmartPacks, which come in large, extra-large and wardrobe sizes, was actually less than that of comparable cardboard boxes.

The cost to rent a MoveGreen box is $1.75 per week. The cost of a similar cardboard box is $3.50 or more.

Angela Shaw also used MoveGreen products recently to move delicate event decorations from the University of Central Florida’s main campus to SeaWorld Orlando. Not only were none of the items damaged en route, she was wowed by how easily the bins stacked on top of one another, like life-sized Legos. With the help of a dolly, she easily moved four SmartPacks at once. “In the past, we've used cardboard boxes that we've had to collect and store around the office,” she says. “Or, we’ve purchased oversized plastic bins that usually resulted in unmanageable weight loads.”

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Startup Smiles

The concept of renting reusable plastic bins is certainly not new. In the past, though, it’s been limited to Fortune 500 companies, moving from office to office, or supermarkets and pharmacies that need to move products.

Now that the residential market has picked up on it, the popularity will likely increase. Plus, the poor economy has actually worked in the startup’s favor. “We were able to get the business up and running without a huge investment of capital,” notes Cannon.

In fact, MoveGreen’s founders snatched up a 4,000-square-foot warehouse recently at a 50 percent discount. “Our trucks, all our expenditures were [obtained] at a discount,” Cannon adds. And look for more MoveGreen locations in the future, as the founders hope to franchise, starting with an Atlanta location, within six months.

Overall, MoveGreen founders say their goal is to reinvent the moving process.

“Twenty years down the road, who knows?” says Cannon. “Perhaps cardboard will be a thing of the past.”