When it comes to the impact of sustainability on pallet selection, the trend is still very much in flux. But that doesn’t mean it is something you can afford to ignore.
While pallet companies serving larger customers are already facing formal sustainability reporting requirements, the trickle-down effect may not have reached smaller or mid-sized businesses yet. As pallet customers look to become more sustainable, they will eventually get to pallets and transport packaging. As a result, experts advise pallet companies of all sizes to take note and be prepared.
Increasingly, customers are looking beyond their four walls to improve their sustainability stories. And it isn’t just carbon. Their reporting requirements will include the carbon emission impact of their pallet purchases as well as other environmental factors, such as recycling, material sourcing practices, waste generation and water consumption. They will also ask about your labor practices, community engagement and more. Addressing sustainability concerns with appropriate solutions may not be critical yet for your business, but it very likely will be soon.
In this roundtable on sustainability and pallets, the Pallet Enterprise sought a wide range of perspectives, from pallet providers to diverse industry insiders and even a pallet user.
The roundtable includes: Brett Bucktooth, who is the senior supplier diversity and sustainability manager at Ongweoweh Corp. Ithaca, New York-based Ongweoweh specializes in providing pallet management solutions, including pallet supply, recycling and sustainable packaging services across various industries. Brad Gething, PhD, is vice president, science and technology at the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association. (NWPCA). Fred Vrugteveen is lead visionary at Niagara Pallet, a Canadian recycler that has been adding state-of-the-art automation. Marshall S. White, PhD, is professor emeritus at Virginia Tech and the president of White & Company. Offering insights from the retail perspective, Joe O’Connor is a grocery retail supply chain consultant with deep knowledge of grocery supply chain packaging. He was formerly supply chain process change manager for Kroger.
Pallet Enterprise: Interest in sustainability continues to grow over time. How are sustainability concerns shaping the purchasing decisions of pallet buyers?
Brett Bucktooth: Today’s factors that shape purchasing decisions include environmental, social and economic considerations. By partnering with Ongweoweh Corp., a customer would be able to check off those boxes. Ongweoweh provides environmental sustainability metrics that measure CO2 avoidance. During all our sourcing events, we provide equal opportunities throughout our supplier network. We know that providing opportunities to diverse suppliers directly impacts the local economy.
Joe O’Connor: While basic pallet specs have been around for years, the additional sustainability needs have become part of overall ESG reviews and expectations across these suppliers. Reusable and renewable materials, even secondary and tertiary packaging, are getting more attention from grocery teams so that the retailer’s reuse/reclaim vendors can complete the cycle.
Brad Gething: We continue to hear that there is a general interest in carbon accounting and, to a lesser extent, having carbon reduction plans. While these strategies aren’t yet driving major purchasing decisions, buyers are showing increased interest. This presents an opportunity for pallet suppliers to stand out by offering expertise in carbon accounting and sustainability metrics. Wooden pallets have long been a sustainable option in the material handling industry, and as the focus on sustainability deepens, the wooden pallet sector is well-positioned to meet the growing demand for environmentally responsible solutions.
Mark White: Pallet purchasers require sustainability as a given in their pallet supplier so that the supplier can partner with them by helping them achieve higher sustainable levels in their company.
Pallet Enterprise: What are the best ways for a wood pallet provider to meet the sustainability requirements of customers?
Brad Gething: While wooden pallets have a strong track record of sustainability, the industry is continually striving to enhance its environmental performance. This includes exploring advanced low/carbon neutral energy production approaches, optimizing production processes for reduced environmental impact, and providing detailed sustainability data to customers.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) have been valuable in communicating the sustainability benefits of wooden pallets. However, more specific information is needed, particularly for custom pallets manufactured at individual facilities. To meet this need, the NWPCA, with funding from the Pallet Foundation, is developing a tool to provide detailed sustainability information tailored to custom pallets.
Fred Vrugteveen: One thing we offer customers is tree planting to offset pallet purchases. When we’re manufacturing new pallets, we allow our customers to include tree planting as part of the price. So, we plant one tree for every stack of new pallets we sell. We use an organization called Veritree. Our customers can go into a portal, and they can physically see that on their behalf, we planted 250 trees in the last three months, for example. It’s a minimal cost – 10 or 20 cents per pallet. You just have to be intentional about it when you present the opportunity.
Brett Bucktooth: The best way to meet sustainability requirements is to know our customers and understand their goals. We aim to be more than just a pallet provider. Ongweoweh prides itself on providing a full-circle solutions approach to meeting our clients’ needs, including environmental goals.
Joe O’Connor: Pallet providers must understand their full life cycle and how each customer supply chain can vary. Regions, materials, recovery and reuse vary significantly. So, meaningful action to improve net sustainability requires a detailed lens. Working with finished goods providers to understand loading, weigh-outs, conditions and handling enables pallet providers to optimize their processes.
Pallet Enterprise: What role do recycling and reusing wood pallets play in reducing environmental impact, and what are the best practices for supporting these approaches?
Brett Bucktooth: Ongweoweh tracks CO2 emissions avoidance, and we are happy to share these metrics with our customers. Wooden pallets start with the trees. Approximately half of the dry weight of a wooden pallet is carbon. Throughout its useful life, the wooden pallet continues to store this carbon. By storing carbon, wooden pallets help to reduce the amount of CO2 that would otherwise be released back into the atmosphere if the wood were to decompose or be burned.
Brad Gething: From our work with the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), we’ve learned that wood pallets are a low embodied carbon product, and the reuse, repair, and remanufacturing processes add minimal environmental impact. The more times a pallet is recovered and reused within the supply chain, the lower its overall environmental footprint.
While factors like economics, logistics, and environmental considerations influence how often a pallet is reused or recycled, the key driver for the recycled pallet industry is the inherent value of the wood. After its initial use, a pallet still holds value—not only as a reusable pallet but also as wood fiber or biomass. Rather than focusing solely on best practices, the real opportunity lies in identifying and promoting ways to maximize this value throughout its lifecycle.
Joe O’Connor: To really improve the environmental impact of wood pallets, more than counts and truckloads matter. Boards, chunks, nails, splinters and paint all impact a pallet provider’s sustainability. Intelligent analysis of breakage, loss, swell, and other factors means operators have to make sense of a customer’s supply chain with a critical eye on the pallet function for goods and returns.
Mark White: As the rates of recycling and reusing wood pallets continue to grow globally, this trend will extend the longevity of the world’s forests. Wood pallet producers must continue to educate their customers to explain the advantages of recycling and reusing pallets, and they, too, when correctly refurbished, are equally fit for purpose as the newly produced pallet.
Pallet Enterprise: What are the emerging trends or innovations in the wood pallet industry that are driving sustainability forward, and how can these be adopted more widely across the industry?
Fred Vrugteveen: I see two exciting possibilities with automated sorting technologies in particular. One is the potential for retailers, such as Walmart, The Home Depot or Amazon, to deploy automated sorting mechanisms within their DCs. This technology will enable them to sort the good pallets out to use internally, eliminating a lot of needless transportation to the recycler and related handling.
Then there’s the data side of the equation. The IVYSIS pallet inspection machine at our plant tracks the data on the size and configuration of the pallets that we don’t have a home for, the ones I don’t typically reuse. And what we’re trying to do with the technology is to aggregate that data, and correlate that pallet information with the provider’s HT code. I want to build a database that combines pallet sizes and HT codes.
Say, for example, over the course of two weeks I dismantle 10,000 pallets, and 500 are a certain size. From the data, I determine that 500 of them were the same size, and they are associated with two HT codes. I can now take this data, go back to the original manufacturers, and say, ‘Hey, do you want to set up a pallet return mechanism for your pallets that I’m recovering?’ So that’s on my wish list for next year from IVYSIS.
Another thing we are looking at to improve sustainability is eliminating decision-making for our sorting and repair staff. Our goal here, by the end of the year, is that when a pallet gets to a repair bench, the operator will see a screen display highlighting the defects that need to be corrected for the pallet to pass inspection. Now my repair guy does what is necessary and only that. How does that help sustainability? You have a more accurate sort, so you’re only going to repair what you need to repair, and pallets are going to their top usage. These are not super complicated to implement, and they create efficiency.
Brett Bucktooth: Our clients are becoming increasingly interested in the on-site repair programs being performed at their distribution centers and manufacturing plants as an extension of their pallet repair program. This offering extends the lifecycle of a pallet and reduces waste while saving time (transportation) and money. Greater pallet reuse reduces the demand for new pallet production and supports circular economy principles. This also supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 13, which urges people to combat climate change and its environmental impact to lower GHG’s.
Brad Gething: The growing emphasis on Scope 3 emissions is increasingly shaping segments of the wood pallet industry. While many businesses have historically focused on Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) emissions, attention has now turned to Scope 3 emissions, which encompass the entire value chain, including suppliers, distributors and customers.
We are seeing how pallet manufacturers are investing in carbon-neutral initiatives and emerging technologies that help reduce Scope 3 emissions from wood pallet use. More prominent approaches include solar panel installations at production facilities, more energy-efficient machinery, and waste-to-energy programs. By integrating these carbon-reduction strategies, the pallet industry continues to evolve as a leader in sustainable practices, offering customers a more eco-conscious supply chain option.
This trend has gained momentum through government incentives and funding designed to encourage industries to invest in carbon-neutral initiatives. To help our members capitalize on these opportunities, NWPCA is ramping up support by organizing initiatives to better educate the industry. These efforts aim to guide members through the eligibility criteria and investment process, including opportunities for carbon-neutral projects.
In addition, pallet manufacturers are responding to a wide range of tailored solutions, including diverse sizes, shapes, and designs to meet specific customer requirements. NWPCA has been on the cutting edge of this shift through our Pallet Design System™ (PDS). For instance, our upcoming PDS release will include the ability to analyze ‘zipper’ remanufactured pallets, which are made from shorter reclaimed deck boards that would otherwise be recycled. By enabling the analysis of these pallets, we aim to enhance quality assurance and promote their broader adoption.
Mark White: The three pillars of sustainable practices are the impact on human health, human prosperity and the environment. Supply chain operations impact all three. For the packaging component of these supply chains, the single best packaging metric, indicating sustainability and carbon footprint, is mass per use. Reducing mass per use, typically reduces the energy required to manufacture, transport, and use the packaging. It further reduces the waste at the end of life. This simplistic view is supported by the recently published wood pallet Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
The ratio of empty packaging mass in a unit load to the total mass of the unit load with product is an excellent first approximation of the carbonization contribution of packaging. With few exceptions, the lower the ratio, the more sustainable the packaging part, and the more sustainable the supply chain. The caveat is that you shouldn’t use this approach to compare the mass of different packaging materials. Within a material like wood, this approach works, but don’t try to compare it to plastic because in the background of plastic are so many other life cycle impacts that are not considered.
The best way to sell a philosophy like sustainable design is to have the idea pulled rather than trying to push it. It’s easier if we can get the idea pulled. If a buyer pulls it, you’re going to be much more successful, and that’s the case when we look at sustainability in society overall.
Pallets and packaging account for a smaller percentage of total impact, so they are lower on the priority list as a focus.
