01Why diversion rates are easy to inflate
There is no audited standard for how a materials recovery business calculates a diversion rate. That leaves at least four levers, each of which can move a number by several points without anybody stating an untruth.
- Count versus weight. Counting pallets rather than weighing them hides the fact that the heaviest, wettest, most contaminated material is the material most likely to be landfilled.
- Including energy recovery as recycling. Burning wood for fuel is better than landfill and it is not recycling. Combining the two adds points.
- Excluding rejected inbound loads. If a contaminated trailer is turned away at the gate and never enters the calculation, the rate improves and the material still goes to landfill.
- Boundary selection. Measuring only the pallets that enter the sort line, rather than everything that arrives, removes the worst material from the denominator.
02How ours is built
Denominator: every pound of material that crosses the weighbridge inbound, including loads we later reject. Numerator: every pound that leaves for a use other than landfill, with energy recovery reported as its own line rather than folded into recycling.
| Outcome | Share by weight | Counted as |
|---|---|---|
| Reused as-is | 41% | Diverted — reuse |
| Repaired and returned | 34% | Diverted — reuse |
| Remanufactured | 11% | Diverted — reuse |
| Fibre recovery | 6% | Diverted — recycling |
| Energy recovery | <1% | Diverted — energy (reported separately) |
| Landfill | 8% | Not diverted |
Note that the large majority of our diversion is reuse rather than recycling. That distinction matters environmentally — reuse avoids the manufacturing emissions of a replacement, which recycling only partially does — and it is worth asking about, because a recycler whose diversion is nearly all grinding is doing something quite different from one whose diversion is nearly all reuse.
03What the 8% is made of
- Chemically contaminated wood. Unidentified residues, spill-soaked pallets, anything that fails our screening. This cannot enter the fibre stream and goes to controlled disposal.
- Embedded metal beyond economic extraction. Heavily plated or banded material where the metal cannot be separated cleanly enough for downstream buyers.
- Non-wood contamination arriving in loads: plastic film, strapping, general waste that came in on the trailer.
- Moisture. Water is weight. A soaked load weighs more inbound than the recoverable fibre it produces, and that gap lands in the residual.
04Three questions to ask any recycler
- Is your rate by weight or by count? Weight is the honest measure. Count flatters.
- Is energy recovery included in the recycling figure? If yes, ask for it separated.
- What is your residual made of? A recycler who cannot describe their landfill stream is not measuring it.
A fourth, if you are building an ESG disclosure: ask whether the reported tonnage reconciles to weighbridge tickets, and whether those tickets are retained. Ours are, for seven years, and the reporting is designed to be forwarded to an auditor without translation. Details on the recycling service page.
05The number that actually matters more
Diversion rate measures what we avoid sending to landfill. It says nothing about what was avoided upstream. The larger environmental effect of this business is not the 92% — it is the 11 to 18 kg of CO₂e that does not get emitted every time a recovered pallet displaces a newly built one.
In 2025 that came to roughly 26,000 tonnes of CO₂e avoided across our volume. You can run your own numbers through the impact calculator, which shows the emissions factors rather than hiding them.
