It’s about that time of year again. The national and state political races are heating up. Campaign ads fill the airways. Candidates are holding big fundraisers and doing whatever they can to be seen and remembered positively on Election Day. And in all the political posturing, we will elect new leadership in less than six months. But what if instead of new candidates, what the U.S. political process needs is a new tool to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of laws and regulations before they are put into place? What if lawmakers could simulate the “unintended consequences” before new laws caused significant economic, social or environmental harm?
That probably sounds like an impractical goal. But researchers from Lafayette College in Easton, Penn. are working on developing a decision-making model that combines economic incentives with environmental data to predict market participants’ interactions and understand their environmental impact. This model combined with computer simulations can forecast economic and environmental consequences of public policy decisions. The research team is continuously improving the models and using them to test case studies. And pallets are a central focus of the team’s research.
Over the years, the team has focused its research on using computational models to simulate the life cycles of wooden shipping pallets, cell phones, and water systems. These items were chosen for study because they are a necessary part of today’s economy although they are not the primary product that consumers want and are mostly in the background of public thought. There is a recycling stream for these items and they are widely used and processed for recycling all over the country. In essence, these three focuses serve as control agents to validate the effectiveness of changes to the decision-making model. The core idea for the pallet recycling market is that pallet repairers will stay in business if they are not too far from a source of pallets and or demand for pallets. This distance also impacts the life cycle cost of the pallet because the longer the distance, the more fuel is used to transport in the recovery process.
The project, which began in 2007 with a $635,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, has combined the efforts of students from many different majors over several years. Currently, the research team is revising its models and research to include pallet rental impacts, economic revenue from waste streams, pallets entering landfills, etc. This modeling project has been led by Dr. Jeff Pfaffmann, associate professor and head of computer science; Dr. Chris Ruebeck, associate professor of economics; Dr. Sharon Jones previously at Lafayette College and now dean of engineering at the University of Poland; and Dr. Kristen Sanford Bernhardt, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. They are combining together three critical areas – computer science, economics and environmental studies needed to make this model work.
As Lafayette College students and staff continue working on this model there may be some conclusions that will interest the pallet industry. Nick Orzol, an electrical and computer engineering student working on the project said, “In addition, we want to know the environmental impacts of the pallets, such as how many miles pallets travel before being trashed and how often pallets are sent to the landfill.”
This research project confirms what I have known all along. Wooden pallets are a central piece of the U.S. economy even though this industry doesn’t usually get the respect that it deserves. A key concept in the Lafayette model is that “without sufficient pallet volume, small repair firms have difficulty surviving.”
By small firms, the researchers are talking about most recyclers except for the few largest players. The current core crunch has made a bad situation worse and it shows no sign of letting up. The central problem is that the total number of new white-wood 48x40s entering the market has dwindled significantly over the past ten years as large product manufacturers have switched en mass to private pallet rental systems. The pallets that are being produced are of inferior quality than in years past. The GMA pool is old and in limited supply and getting worse each day.
Pallet recyclers have experienced over the past year what new pallet guys have known for a decade or more. The GMA market is not the future of the recycling industry unless new pallets are put into the system at a much higher rate. So where to from here? The white-wood pallet industry needs to develop a quality specification and build more pallets, and that needs to start right away. You can’t just assume that when supply of used cores dwindles further that new pallet production will pick up to resupply the system. Customers may switch to rental or some other system that leaves the white-wood guys out of the picture unless it has a compelling market answer to this dilemma. Many are hoping that the 9BLOC cooperative pool will fill this need. It may, but then again, it may not. Of course, you never innovate unless you keep on trying new ways to improve your industry and product.
What does seem clear though is that palletization will be around for a long time unless there is a massive transformation in how products are packaged and shipped around the globe. This issue carries an article on page 28 that explores what a world without pallets would look like. The idea came from a researcher who is trying to use concepts from the Internet to optimize supply chains. He suggests that pallets may not be the best answer. However, most materials handling experts disagreed, pointing to the many ways palletization has saved money and made logistics more efficient.
I am encouraged that researchers recognize that life cycle analysis and environmental policies must include real-world economic factors as well. In the end, “green ideas” won’t take hold in a big way unless there is both an economic and environmental rationale for those decisions. And I am not surprised that pallets are a great test focus. Pallets are everywhere, necessary and mostly forgotten by users unless something goes wrong.
Let’s hope that the white-wood industry can find its own model to answer the questions that challenge us most in this tough core crunch. I don’t think palletization is in question as much as who will own them and what management system will dominate the future.
