Manufacturers
Inbound raw material arrives on pallets that do not match the outbound footprint. We take the mismatch away and supply what the outbound line actually needs.
Service 03
Pallet Recycling
In short
Pallet recycling is not one process, it is a cascade. A returned pallet is first tested for direct reuse, then for repair, then for dismantling into reusable boards, then for remanufacture into a smaller footprint, and only after all four fail does it become fibre. We run the whole cascade in-house at Evendale, which is why 96% of the wood we collect goes back into service instead of into a dumpster.
Quote: Pallet Recycling
Send the details and a named person at the Evendale yard replies within one business day with pricing, freight and a piece count — in writing.
The recovery cascade, stage by stage
Recycling wood well means resisting the urge to grind. Grinding is fast, it is easy to sell, and it destroys roughly 90% of the value and most of the carbon benefit locked in a pallet. Every stage we can delay the grinder by is a stage that keeps a board doing the job it was milled for.
- 01 · Direct reuse
A core arrives sound. It is cleaned, inspected, graded and banded. No tools touched it. This is the highest-value and lowest-energy outcome, and it applies to roughly 55% of what comes in.
- 02 · Repair
One cracked stringer or two missing deck boards. A bench technician plugs, plates or replaces the failed member using harvested wood and the unit re-enters service at #1 or #2 grade. About 27% of intake.
- 03 · Board harvest
The frame is beyond saving but the lumber is not. A dismantler bar strips the deck; sound boards are de-nailed, trimmed and stacked as repair stock. Roughly 9%.
- 04 · Remanufacture
A destroyed 48x40 still contains enough clean length to build a 36x36 or a 42x42. Remanufactured pallets are how odd sizes stay affordable. Around 5%.
- 05 · Fibre recovery
What is left is ground, screened and either coloured into landscape mulch, sized into animal bedding, or sold as boiler fuel to regional biomass plants. The final 3%.
Who runs a recycling program with us
Grocery and retail DCs
High volume, high grade-mix variability, tight dock windows. We schedule around receiving peaks rather than through them.
Third-party logistics
Multiple clients, multiple pallet standards, no ownership of any of it. We sort by owner where required and report by account.
Breweries and beverage
Keg and case footprints, frequent moisture exposure, seasonal surges. Our 36x36 and 48x48 lines exist largely because of this sector.
Municipalities and transfer stations
Wood pallets are the single most-recoverable item in a construction and demolition stream. We pull them before they are ever tipped.
Property managers
Retail plazas and industrial parks where nobody owns the pile but everybody trips over it. One scheduled sweep, one invoice.
The part nobody mentions: metal
A standard 48x40 stringer pallet contains between 70 and 100 nails, roughly 1.5 to 2.5 pounds of steel. Across our annual volume that is hundreds of tons of ferrous metal that would otherwise be buried inside buried wood. Our dismantling line runs magnetic separation on the discharge conveyor and on the grinder outfeed; recovered nails and banding are baled and sold to regional scrap processors. It is a small revenue line and a large environmental one.
Auditable reporting
Sustainability claims are only worth what the underlying data can survive. Every inbound trailer is weighed and counted, every outbound stream is weighed, and the two are reconciled monthly. You receive tonnage by destination, a diversion rate, estimated CO₂e retained in reused wood and displaced by avoided virgin lumber, and the methodology behind those numbers in plain language.
- Monthly PDF statement per site, plus a rolled-up corporate summary
- CSV export for customers feeding their own ESG platform
- Methodology published openly so your auditor can check our arithmetic
- Year-end letter suitable for inclusion in a corporate responsibility report
What contamination looks like at the intake belt
One person stands at the intake belt and pulls material before it can reach any downstream process. It is the least automated step in the building and the one we are least willing to automate. This is the catalogue they work from.
| What they are looking for | Why it matters | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| MB stamp (methyl bromide) | Chemically fumigated. Must never enter mulch, bedding or the studio line. | Segregated; licensed handler |
| Painted or coated wood | Unknown coating chemistry. Cannot be ground into landscape product. | Segregated; licensed handler |
| Chemical staining or residue | Common on drum pallets from the Kanawha Valley lanes. | Segregated; licensed handler |
| Food spill, organic residue | Attracts pests, produces odour, disqualifies the clean-core line. | Cleaned or scrapped by condition |
| Live pest activity or exit holes | Ends the unit immediately. Never enters export or studio stock. | Segregated; destroyed |
| Pooled units (CHEP, PECO, iGPS) | Not ours and not the customer's to sell. A liability, not an asset. | Returned to the customer, stacked separately |
| Metal plates from prior repairs | Survive dismantling, damage grinder knives, end up as metal in mulch. | Plate removed or unit scrapped |
| Non-wood debris in the load | Film, banding, broken product, occasionally an entire pallet jack. | Weighed, reported back, disposed |
That last row is why our published landfill figure is under one percent rather than zero. Non-wood debris arrives mixed into loads, it has to go somewhere, and we weigh it and report it rather than quietly absorbing it into a rounding. A recycler claiming a flat 100% diversion has either never received a mixed load or is not weighing what leaves.
The metal stream nobody counts
A standard 48×40 stringer pallet contains between 70 and 100 fasteners. We used to quote 1.6 lb of steel per pallet from a published average; after a year of weighing our own bales against the pallets that produced them, we revised it up to 2.0 lb and changed the constant on our methodology page. The likely reason is repair history — a unit that has been through several repair cycles carries the original fasteners plus every subsequent one, and the recovered pool skews toward repaired units.
- Drum magnet, grinder infeed
Removes loose banding, strapping and fasteners that have already worked free of the wood.
- Cross-belt magnet, grinder discharge
Catches nails freed by the grinding action itself. This is the stage most yards skip, and it is the reason people find nails in cheap mulch.
- Dismantler discharge magnet
Separate stream from teardown, where fasteners are pulled rather than broken out.
- Baling
Consolidated and baled on site. Sold to regional ferrous processors — a small revenue line and a large environmental one.
2.0 lbmeasured steel recovered per pallet, revised up in 2025
1,186 tferrous baled in the twelve months to August 2026
2×magnetic separation stages before any screening
How to write a zero-landfill clause that means something
Most zero-landfill language in supply agreements is unenforceable, because it commits to an outcome without defining the measurement. If you are writing one — with us or with anybody — these are the clauses that make it real.
- Define the boundary. Does the commitment cover wood only, or everything that arrives on the trailer including film, banding and broken product? Both are legitimate; only one of them is usually stated.
- Require weight, not piece count. Specify that diversion is calculated from weighbridge tickets in and out, and that the tickets are available on request.
- Require the streams to be separated in reporting. Reuse, repair, harvest, remanufacture, fibre and licensed disposal are not equivalent outcomes and collapsing them into "recycled" hides the important information.
- Name the exception. Contaminated material has to go somewhere. Require it to be reported by weight rather than excluded from the denominator.
- Require the methodology to be published or supplied, including every constant used in any carbon figure.
- Require notification if the methodology changes. A diversion rate that improves without an operational change usually means the method changed.
- Set the reporting cadence at monthly, not annual. A monthly discrepancy is a question; an annual one is an investigation.
Common questions
What does zero-landfill actually mean here?
It means no wood we collect is sent to landfill. Contaminated units and non-wood debris that arrives mixed into a load are the sole exception, and those are reported to you by weight rather than quietly absorbed.
Do you charge for a recycling program?
Usually not. Recoverable wood pays for the collection. Programs that are heavily weighted toward scrap or that sit far outside our radius may carry a modest per-load fee, always quoted in advance.
Can you handle a one-time cleanout?
Yes. Plant closures, warehouse moves and post-holiday clearouts are routine for us. Send photos and a rough count and we will bring the right number of trailers.
How is recycled pallet wood different from virgin lumber?
Chemically it is the same hardwood or softwood. Structurally it is often drier and more dimensionally stable, because it has already completed its shrinkage. The difference that matters is that it required no new felling, no new drying energy and no new transport from a mill.