Our lives are full of cardboard. The packaging of certain things we buy, from food products to electrical goods, is made of cardboard. In the UK, over 8 million tons of the stuff is produced every year just for packaging. It makes the things we buy more expensive, too. On average, 16% of the money we spend on a product is for the packaging. And where does the packaging usually end up? In the bin, of course, but hopefully that's the recycling bin not the rubbish bin!

Recycling cardboard is much more efficient than producing it in the first place. It takes 24% less energy and produces 50% less sulphur dioxide to recycle it. Recycled cardboard has some remarkable uses, too. Obviously, it ends up as packaging again, but it is also used as a building material. It isn't as expensive as traditional materials and it is often more accessible. Some innovative and environmentally friendly designers are actually using it to make furniture and buildings.

One such person is Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who designed wonderful emergency shelters made of cardboard tubes. The first people to use these were the survivors of the appalling earthquake in Kobe, Japan, in 1995. Since then, they have been used in other places around the world after terrible natural disasters. Perhaps Ban's most outstanding design is his cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand. His modern, eco-friendly cathedral for up to 700 people is a temporary replacement for the ancient cathedral that was damaged in the earthquake in February 2011 .

(Adapted from "Achievers B1" by Helen Halliwell)