[jhgfgbhn]

They are made from a material that is easy to reuse - steel. In fact you can't make modern furnace steel without adding scrap steel to the blast furnace to control the temperature.

The problem is that the floors of the containers are wood and to protect the farmers they are impregnated with some of the nastiest pesticides you can imagine - so no foreign bug can hitch a lift.

Used containers are basically toxic waste, if you are reusing them for housing/storage/etc you are supposed to remove the floor, sandblast the inside and repaint everything in an EPA approved paint - which costs several times as much as the container.

[Tichy]

Uncomfortable thought, especially since probably everything we use has traveled in that toxic box. I wonder if it even make much sense - don't the bugs find a way to travel anyway?

[jhgfgbhn]

You're thinking logically - try thinking like a politician who has a lot of farmers in their constituency, or who belongs to a party where the first primary is in a farming state, or needs another politician from a farming state onside