Journal category
Diversion, carbon accounting and the numbers we can actually defend.
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The subject
Most pallet sustainability claims are directionally right and quantitatively invented. The direction is not in doubt — recovering an existing pallet emits roughly a tenth of what building a new one does, and landfilling wood generates methane rather than carbon dioxide. The problem is the decimal places.
Three things inflate these numbers reliably: counting the carbon already sequestered in the wood as a saving, combining the avoided-manufacturing and avoided-landfill benefits without saying that both are being claimed, and quoting a single recovery factor without reference to distance when recovery emissions are dominated by transport.
What is filed here shows the arithmetic instead, including the parts that do not flatter us — the 8% of intake we do not divert, the wide uncertainty band on the landfill methane factor, and the fact that most of our environmental benefit comes from reuse rather than from recycling.
Recurring figures
Where to start
The five-tier hierarchy, with the percentages.
Four ways a diversion rate gets inflated.
The factors, with confidence levels attached.
3 articles
Most pallet carbon claims are directionally right and quantitatively invented. Here are the factors we use, where they come from, and the uncertainty attached to each.
Any number you cannot interrogate is a marketing claim. Here is exactly how ours is built, including the part that does not flatter us.
Most people who sell us pallets have never seen what happens next. It is a five-tier hierarchy, and about 41% of everything we collect never needs a repair at all.
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