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Accumulating scrap wood pallets, dunnage and wooden crating is a problem for many facilities. In a perfect world, you could reuse the emptied pallets or sell them to used pallet dealers, but depending on your supply chain, that may not be an option. Let’s take a look at ideas to help your business prevent pallet disposal through these pallet removal, recycling and reuse tips.
10 Pallet Removal Tips
1 Pallet and Packaging Retrieval and Reuse
If you find yourself with a pallet disposal challenge, contact the shipper about taking them back. Moving to a reusable program may require shifting to a better-engineered, more durable product to support reuse. A folding or knock-down design will accommodate better cube utilization and more efficient return to the shipper for pallet containers or crates. A nesting pallet, if feasible, can also improve the empty return ratio. Enlisting a third party, such as a pallet management or reusable packaging specialist, may make sense.
2 Look for the Owners
Returning empties may be as simple as calling an 800 number stenciled onto pallets or otherwise contacting the shipper to retrieve them.
3 Pallet Rental
Again, if distances or other reverse logistics challenges make a packaging return program impractical or a distraction from core activities, discuss with the shipper the possibility of using a rental pallet provider such as CHEP.
4 Pallet Flow Through
Pallet flow through can be defined as reusing a pallet that has arrived under load after it has been emptied and using it for outbound shipping. Think about pallet flow-through as an option. This method was first pioneered over seventy years ago but used far too infrequently. Can your supplier send goods to you on a pallet that you can reuse to ship your product?
5 Value Added “Buy Under Load”
Another option for introducing durable pallets is through a value-added “buy under load” arrangement. This approach can be useful for a company looking to build a fleet of high-quality pallets, with part of that cost absorbed by the inbound shipper as an alternative to the product supplier buying a cheaper pallet or paying for pallet rental. For example, a manufacturer buys durable pallets and then sells them to the distributor under load at a rate discounted (use an example of $7) to cover the initial use by the manufacturer. In this way, the receiving company can help build its inventory of durable pallets cheaper than absorbing the entire purchase price.
6 Ask the Shipper to Ship on a Standard Size that Has Resale Value
Ask the shipper to utilize a common or standard footprint pallet that will be in demand locally after you empty them.
7 Dock Sweep
You may wish to discuss your challenges with a local pallet recycler. If you are accumulating pallets of a marketable size, then a sales agreement should be possible. As part of the deal, some pallet recyclers offer additional services such as hauling away unsaleable used pallets and wood packaging material. They may also want to pull your old corrugated cardboard (OCC) and baled stretch or shrink wrap as part of a dock sweep program. The attraction of doing this with a single provider is that instead of tying up multiple dock doors for different materials or moving trailers in and out from the dock, one trailer can be filled with the range of old pallets, OCC, and baled plastic.
8 Easy to Recycle Paper or Plastic Pallets
Where prospects are weak for pallet rental, reuse programs or dock sweeps, lightweight pallets made of plastic or corrugated paper may offer easy-to-recycle solutions for some applications. IKEA’s phasing out of wood pallets is one example. The retailer switched to cardboard pallets with an eye to eliminating the storage and reverse logistics challenges associated with wood pallets. Some companies also request the use of lightweight plastic pallets, which they can have readily recycled.
9 Wood Recycling Options
If pallet or wood packaging reuse opportunities are not available, another option is to install a wood grinder or work with a wood recycling company that hauls away wood waste. Some companies that generate a lot of wood packaging waste have installed inline low-speed wood grinders to efficiently remove it.
10 Leave at the Curb or Offer Online
Given the value of wood and the interest of hobbyists, some companies leave wood pallets and packaging by the curb with a “Free” sign. Other companies advertise the availability of free pallets on sites such as Facebook Marketplace. Dealing with the general public poses certain risk exposures, which should be considered, however.
Parting Word
The last thing any manufacturer or distribution center wants is to have its perimeter look like a pallet scrap yard. Be sure to organize empty pallets and stack them as neatly as possible, taking care to abide by local fire regulations such as setbacks from buildings and perimeter fences, etc. With a little creativity, you will find options available to free your facility or parking lot from unwanted pallets and packaging debris.
Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.
