Sustainability
Circular is not a campaign here. It is the P&L.
A pallet we repair earns roughly nine dollars of margin. The same pallet ground into mulch earns fifty-five cents. Our incentives and our environmental claims point in exactly the same direction, which is the only reason you should believe either of them.
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RePallet Co. sends nothing from its wood stream to landfill. Incoming cores are routed reuse first (46%), then repair (31%), then remanufacture (12%), then lumber recovery (8%), with only about 3% ending up as ground fibre.
The order matters more than the headline. Anyone can call grinding "recycling". The test of a circular pallet operation is how much it refuses to grind.
The hierarchy
Five stops, and we fight for every place on the list
- 1
Reuse
46% of intake needs only inspection and a clean. The cheapest and greenest outcome available.
- 2
Repair
31% need one to four boards or a companion stringer, then go back to Grade A or B.
- 3
Remanufacture
12% are cut down into half pallets, skids and display bases using their own lumber.
- 4
Recover lumber
8% yield boards and runners for cladding, crating and furniture.
- 5
Recycle fibre
3% becomes mulch, playground fibre and animal bedding. Steel goes to a smelter.
Read the detail in how pallet recycling works, including real yields and where the value drops off a cliff.
The ReLoop Ledger
Your volume, your numbers
Every figure below is calculated from published factors you can check. Move the slider and the whole ledger recalculates.
That is 3,000 pallets over 12 months — the equivalent of taking 3.1 cars off Colorado roads for a year.
The ReLoop Ledger
A full-page calculator with cadence, comparisons and the assumptions written out.
Open the calculatorPallet Passport
Trace any batch we have shipped: source, repairs, recovery and where it went next.
Trace a batchCarbon methodology
Every factor, its source and the assumptions we think are weakest.
Read the mathsLast full year
The numbers, before anyone rounds them
These are yard figures, not modelled estimates. Intake is weighed on our own scale; disposition is counted at the sort line; the carbon figure applies published factors to those counts.
How we countWhat we will not do
- Buy, sell or grind pooled pallets that belong to someone else
- Accept methyl-bromide-stamped wood into any recovery stream
- Grind a pallet that could have been repaired to hit a tonnage target
- Publish a carbon figure without naming the factor behind it
- Call a weight ticket “reporting”
Honesty clause
Where our numbers are weakest
Carbon accounting in this industry is full of convenient assumptions. Ours has three soft spots and we would rather name them than be caught with them.
- The avoided-manufacture baseline. 4.8 kg CO₂e per reused pallet assumes a new hardwood 48x40 as the counterfactual. If your alternative was a cheaper softwood pallet, the real saving is lower.
- Sequestration. We do not count carbon stored in the wood itself, because the accounting conventions are contested. Including it would flatter us.
- Our own freight. Collection and delivery emissions are netted against the saving. We report the net, not the gross, and the factor is in the methodology.
Sustainability questions
Is "zero landfill" a real claim or a marketing one?
It is a real claim about our wood stream, and it is falsifiable: we publish intake tonnage, the disposition split and the reject tonnage that goes to licensed disposal. Ask for the numbers and we will send them. Any recycler who will not is asking you to take it on trust.
Which is greener — reusing or recycling a pallet?
Reusing, by a wide margin. Repair avoids the manufacture of a new pallet — roughly 4.8 kg CO₂e and 23 board feet of lumber. Grinding avoids a landfill, which is worth having, but the lumber is gone. This is why only about 3% of our intake ends up as fibre.
Can I use your figures in my own ESG report?
Yes, and that is what the Pallet Passport is for. Each batch record gives unit counts, weights, the recovery split and the avoided-carbon figure with the factor stated. The methodology is published in full so your auditor can check our working.
Are wooden pallets actually sustainable?
A wooden pallet stores carbon while it exists, is made from a renewable material, and is one of the few packaging formats with a genuinely functioning repair economy. The failure mode is not the material — it is throwing it away after one trip. Everything we do attacks that failure mode.
Circularity indicators, calculated properly
“Circular” is doing a lot of work in most packaging marketing. These are the indicators that actually mean something, with ours attached.
| Indicator | Definition | Ours |
|---|---|---|
| Recirculation rate | Units returned to service ÷ units received | 89% |
| Reuse rate | Units reused without repair ÷ received | 46% |
| Repair rate | Units repaired and returned ÷ received | 31% |
| Remanufacture rate | Units rebuilt to another form ÷ received | 12% |
| Material recovery rate | Mass recovered as lumber, steel or fibre | 11% |
| Landfill rate, wood stream | Mass landfilled ÷ mass received | 0% |
| Residual disposal | Mass to licensed disposal (MB, contaminated) | 6 t |
| Average lives per core | Observed across tracked batches | ≈ 7 |
| Recycled content of repairs | Reclaimed lumber ÷ all repair lumber | 96% |
The environmental case against new packaging, quantified
Every pallet kept in circulation is a pallet that does not need building. Scaled across a real operation, the numbers get large quickly.
| Pallets per year | CO₂e avoided | Board feet not cut | Landfill diverted | Trees equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,200 | 5.8 t | 27,600 | 19.6 t | ≈ 100 |
| 6,000 | 28.8 t | 138,000 | 97.8 t | ≈ 502 |
| 12,000 | 57.6 t | 276,000 | 195.6 t | ≈ 1,004 |
| 30,000 | 144 t | 690,000 | 489 t | ≈ 2,509 |
| 60,000 | 288 t | 1,380,000 | 978 t | ≈ 5,018 |
Tree equivalents are an illustration rather than a forestry calculation — 275 board feet per mature hardwood is a working estimate that varies enormously. The CO₂e and landfill figures are the ones to put in a report, with the factor stated. Run your own volume on the ReLoop Ledger.
How to audit a recycler, including us
Six questions. The answers, and the manner of answering, will tell you more than any certification.
- What is your recirculation rate? Reuse plus repair plus remanufacture, as a percentage of intake. A specific number is a good sign.
- What percentage of intake do you grind? High and proud means a disposal operation. Ours is 3%.
- What goes to landfill, and is it audited? A zero-landfill claim without a stated boundary is not a claim.
- What carbon factor do you use and where is it from? Most differences between operators are methodology, not performance.
- Do you count sequestration or avoided landfill methane? Both are defensible and both massively inflate a headline. Knowing changes how you compare.
- Can I have a batch-level record rather than an annual summary? An annual figure cannot be tied to your own loads.
Our answers are 89%, 3%, zero across the wood stream with 6 tonnes to licensed disposal and an independent verification since 2024, 4.8 kg CO₂e from published LCA literature, no and no, and yes — every batch, on the Pallet Passport page.
Make your pallets part of the loop
Buyback, supply and reporting under one contract, with batch-level records your auditor will accept.