Reading a diversion report critically
In short
Diversion reporting is largely unregulated, which makes it easy to present favourably. The questions that matter are whether the numbers come from weights or piece counts, whether every outbound stream is reported including the unflattering ones, whether the boundary is stated, and whether the underlying tickets are available. A supplier who cannot produce weight tickets is not measuring; they are estimating and rounding.
Talk to us about this
If this piece describes a problem you actually have, describe it back to us in the message field. You will get a written answer from a person within one business day.
Seven questions
- Is this measured by weight or by piece count?
Piece counts flatter. The units that go to disposal are typically the wettest, heaviest and most contaminated, so counting pieces understates the disposal fraction systematically.
- What are all the outbound streams, by weight?
Reuse, repair, board harvest, remanufacture, fibre, licensed disposal. If one of those is missing from the report, ask specifically about it — it is almost always the last one.
- What is the boundary?
Does the diversion rate cover only wood, or everything that arrived on the trailer including film, banding and broken product? Both are legitimate; only one of them is usually stated.
- Is reuse separated from grinding?
A pallet reused intact and a pallet ground into mulch both count as diverted, and they are nothing like equivalent environmentally. A report that does not separate them is hiding its most important information.
- Can I see the underlying tickets?
Weighbridge tickets in and out are the evidence. A supplier who can produce them on request is measuring. One who cannot is estimating.
- How is contaminated material handled and reported?
Chemically treated and MB-stamped wood has to go somewhere. That tonnage should be named and weighed, not absorbed into a rounding.
- Has the methodology changed?
A diversion rate that improves without any operational change usually means the method changed. Ask what changed and when.
What a defensible report looks like
It starts with inbound weight, reconciled against outbound weight by stream, with the difference accounted for rather than ignored. It separates the recovery cascade into its actual stages rather than collapsing everything into "recycled". It names its exclusions. And it is accompanied by a published methodology that somebody outside the company can check.
| Stream | Reported as | Why it is separate |
|---|---|---|
| Direct reuse | Tons, % of inbound | Highest value, lowest energy — the outcome that matters most |
| Repair | Tons, % of inbound | Near-full value retained, minimal input |
| Board harvest | Tons, % of inbound | Material retained as lumber, not as a pallet |
| Remanufacture | Tons, % of inbound | Rebuilt into a different footprint |
| Fibre recovery | Tons, % of inbound | Value largely released; carbon on a short clock |
| Licensed disposal | Tons, % of inbound | The number nobody volunteers — ask for it |
Ours, for what it is worth
Roughly 96 percent of the wood arriving at Evendale returns to service as a pallet or a component, about 3 percent becomes fibre products, and under 1 percent reaches licensed disposal — contaminated units and non-wood debris that arrived mixed into a load. Those figures come from weighbridge tickets, they are reconciled monthly, and the constants behind the carbon arithmetic are published on a page anybody can read.
We have revised two of those constants downward since first publishing them, both times after a customer's consultant made a persuasive case. Both revisions made our headline numbers smaller. That is roughly the test for whether a methodology is real.
Appendix: the data behind this
Every piece on this site closes with the slice of our operating record that bears on what it argues. The full record is published at /resources/operating-record.
Our streams, by weight, with disposal named
This is the shape a defensible diversion report has: every stream separated, weights rather than counts, and the unflattering line present.
| Stream | Share by weight | Tons | Destination |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct reuse | 55.3% | 27,240 | Back out as a graded pallet, no tool used |
| Repair and return | 27% | 13,300 | Bench repair, regraded, banded |
| Board harvest | 9.1% | 4,483 | De-nailed lumber into our own repair stock |
| Remanufacture | 5.2% | 2,562 | Jig-built into 42×42, 36×36, 48×45 and custom |
| Fibre recovery | 2.9% | 1,429 | Mulch, playground fibre, animal bedding, hog fuel |
| Ferrous recovery | — | 1,186 | Baled nails and banding to regional scrap processors |
| Licensed disposal | 0.5% | 246 | Chemically treated, MB-stamped and non-wood debris |