What to do with Used or Broken Wooden Pallets?
Wood pallets piling up in your warehouse? Is your company looking for best practices for wood packaging and pallet removal that avoid pallet disposal at landfills?
A problem for many facilities is the accumulation of pallets, dunnage and wooden crates. Your supply chain may prevent you from reusing emptied pallets or selling them to used pallet dealers. These pallet removal, recycling, and reuse tips will help your business prevent pallet disposal.
Return pallets to the manufacturer
Often times you can find the company that produced the pallet written somewhere on it. Pallet companies are always looking for used pallets that they can recondition and resell. Most local pallet yards also offer free pick up and recycling services. So it may be worth picking up the phone and contacting some pallet yards near you
Return Pallets to Shipper
Reach out to the shipper about taking back pallets if you find yourself facing a pallet disposal challenge. It may be necessary to replace the existing product with a better engineered, more durable one to support a reusable program. An efficient pallet container or crate return to the shipper can be achieved through a folding or knockdown design. Consider involving a third party like a pallet management company or a reusable packaging company.
Pallet Rental Services
As a last resort, if distances or reverse logistics challenges prevent a packaging return program from being effective, speak with the shipper about the possibility of using rental pooled pallets as an alternative. The largest pallet rental company in the United States is CHEP. They are typically easy to stop because they are pained blue. These pallets cannot be bought or sold by 3rd parties and must be returned to the CHEP company.
Request that the shipment be shipped in a standard size with a higher resale value (48″ x 40″)
If it is possible, ask the shipper to use a pallet with a similar footprint, which will be in demand locally once the pallets have been emptied. Typically if you can gather pallets that are the same standard size you should have no difficulty selling them off.
Find a Total Recycling Solution near you
You may want to talk to a local pallet recycler about your challenges. The possibility of a sales agreement should be available if you are accumulating pallets that are of a marketable size. Additional services including hauling away unsaleable pallets and wood packaging material are offered by some pallet recyclers as part of the deal.
As part of a total recycling program, they may be interested in picking up your old corrugated cardboard (OCC), gaylord boxes, ibc totes, bales of stretch or shrink wrap. In contrast to having to tie up multiple dock doors for different materials or move trailers in and out of the dock, one trailer can be filled with old pallets, OCC, and baled plastics all at the same time.
Wood recycling on-site
We worked with one company that simply repaired wooden pallets onsite and reused them. This saved them lots of money on new pallets and solved the waste issue
A wood grinder or a wood recycling company that hauls away wood waste may be an alternative if pallet or wood packaging reuse is not possible. To effectively remove wood packaging waste from companies that generate a lot of it, low-speed grinders have been installed inline.
Wooden Pallet Storage Best Practices
When companies are trying so hard to eliminate pallet disposal solid waste, the last thing they want is to have their perimeter look like a pallet scrap yard. Maintain local fire regulations, such as setbacks from buildings and perimeter fences, by organizing empty pallets and stacking them neatly. It is possible to eliminate unwanted pallets and packaging debris from your facility or parking lot with a little creativity.
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