When Kat Vasquez of Oxnard, California-based Oxnard Pallet looks at the pallet recycling company’s customer list, only about 5% currently ask for sustainability reporting. But even that small slice, concentrated in food and beverage, has her team weighing next steps carefully.
One obvious response would be to generate a glossy annual sustainability report, something increasingly offered by larger companies. “We have considered it, but it’s a massive undertaking,” Vasquez said. “Our current strategy is to prioritize impactful projects over comprehensive reporting for the time being.” And that makes great sense. It’s better to have better numbers to share than to focus on sharing numbers that could be improved.
For now, the California recycler is working to complete a rooftop solar installation that has taken nearly a year. Grid power is unreliable in their rural location, so solar is a positive approach from both an environmental and a business perspective. Once it is complete, Vasquez expects the project to open the door to electrifying more machinery. Another step Oxnard has taken is optimizing freight movements through its Pallet Connect ERP system. As for a formal sustainability report, Vasquez says that it might come later.
Customer requests for environmental metrics are rising, but the path forward remains unclear. How much detail is really required, and what will customers actually accept? And how can smaller suppliers with thin margins respond without being buried in paperwork?
The Bigger Picture
The pallet industry is hardly alone in facing rising expectations. Across the U.S. and globally, sustainability reporting is shifting from voluntary to expected. Analysts note that pressure comes from multiple directions, including regulators, investors and large customers.
A Forbes analysis this summer warned executives that reporting demands are accelerating, even as companies express “regulatory fatigue.” Another observed that Europe’s new sustainability due diligence laws are already shaping U.S. supply chains, regardless of Washington’s pace. The CPA Journal recently noted, “Mandatory sustainability metrics reporting has arrived in America via Europe.”
Politics adds another layer of uncertainty. The current administration has signaled less appetite for sweeping federal ESG disclosure rules, but few expect a retreat from sustainability pressures. An EY outlook summarized the mood with the phrase “Here today, here tomorrow.” And as a Reuters analysis noted, business won’t abandon sustainability. It is increasingly seen as a long-term play that reduces risk and attracts capital.
One complication related to the current political climate is what Jim Hartzfeld, principal & founder of Hartzfeld Sustainability Advisors, calls “green hushing.” Green hushing refers to the trend of companies publicly saying less about sustainability because of political polarization. “Don’t mistake the reduction in marketing conversation about sustainability. This doesn’t mean that companies are stopping their internal work on it,” he cautioned. “Don’t assume that green hushing means they’re not interested any longer. They’re focusing again on fundamentals.”
For pallet suppliers, requests may change with political cycles, but the overall trajectory is moving gradually upward. While a company like Oxnard Pallet may only see 5% of its customers asking today, the largest operators, such as 48forty Solutions, have pegged that number at 30%. In an ad hoc LinkedIn survey run in September, seven respondents (64%) found sustainability reporting requirements impacted less than 10% of sales, while three of 11 (27%) said reporting was required for 10% and 50% of sales. One respondent pegged the number at more than 50%.
What Pallet Companies Are Seeing
Jess Bonsall, 48forty’s director of ESG, says the demands vary depending on the customer sector. “Consumer product distributors and international companies have a much broader ask,” she explained. “Food and beverage depends on whether they are U.S.-only or international and the compliance requirements they manage. And manufacturing tends to be more focused on social metrics related to health and safety, and governance around quality control.”
That spread makes it impossible to rely on stock responses. “It means that we can’t have a boilerplate response to everything that comes in the door,” Bonsall elaborated. Instead, 48forty assesses in terms of company impact. She likens it to a cost-benefit analysis: “Are they a big customer? Is this something that we need to be prioritizing? How does it benefit us long term?”
For smaller independents, the calculation is tougher. Sustainability-minded customers may send questionnaires borrowed from corporate ESG playbooks that don’t fit the pallet sector well. Ralph Rupert of Johnson Industries Pallets in Sharpsville, Ohio, has seen customer sustainability requests shift over time. “The definition of sustainability has changed somewhat,” he said. “It initially was about the packaging, recycling, etc. Now it is more about business practices like energy usage, water consumption, and so on.”
That shift makes customer surveys harder to answer, Rupert added. “They often don’t apply, and smaller shops don’t have the resources to monitor these issues,” he noted. For his company, requests usually arrive once a year, sometimes via platforms such as EcoVadis. He completes the mandatory paperwork but receives little or nothing in the way of feedback.
Brad Gething, vice president of science and technology at the National Wooden Pallet & Container Association, describes such requests as “a bowl of Jello” that’s hard to pin down. “What people can get confused about is, am I creating something on my own, or am I trying to meet a customer demand? And if they’re trying to meet a customer demand, then usually that customer is going to have a very defined thing they are looking for,” he said.
But what customers define and what they accept may differ. “A big box retailer may say one thing, but when it comes down to it, what they actually accept could look different because of data availability,” Gething said. “And that’s really the challenge.” With this in mind, NWPCA, through the support of the Pallet Foundation, has been updating its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for wooden pallets, which creates a baseline industry average for the wood pallet industry. It also sets a high bar of credibility and transparency for competing materials to meet. In addition, NWPCA is working on a custom environmental impact calculator tool that utilizes the EPD methodology and will be released in the first half of 2026. The new tool will allow pallet companies to input specific information on the pallet, material and operation to generate more accurate sustainability metrics. (We will discuss this further in the next installment. To find out how you can participate in the EPD and how your involvement can help you, see the article on page 65.)
Larger operators like 48forty and Kamps have gone so far as to publish an annual sustainability or social responsibility report. The annual report typically consolidates the most common questions relating to carbon emissions, climate disclosures, and other metrics, which are then posted online. “Part of the reasoning for having it up on the webpage is it allows us to check the box from that regulatory angle,” Bonsall said. For larger customers, having an annual sustainability report can save time and demonstrate transparency.
But she cautions smaller firms to start with the low-hanging fruit. “Nobody’s going to know your company better than you. Start internally and start small. What do you do best? Focus on that, and build your strategy around the things that you know.” That pragmatic advice echoes Vasquez at Oxnard Pallet, who is prioritizing tangible investments such as solar and electrification rather than spending resources on an annual report.
Producing Defensible Numbers
For many companies, the hardest part is simply understanding what information is meaningful. Bonsall does not mince words: “I think sustainability practitioners have done a lot to confuse people.” Her advice is to avoid vague claims and stick to defensible numbers. “If you can’t de-facto go back and tell someone, ‘By doing X, you get Y,’ don’t talk about it that way.”
That distinction of aspirational, unsupported claims versus verifiable data is something that Hartzfeld also stresses. A veteran sustainability leader who until last year headed North American sustainability for Brambles, he warns that “eco-friendly” talk without evidence is increasingly dismissed. “Back away from the fluffy, eco-friendly statements,” he said.
Hartzfeld distills what should matter for pallet firms into three buckets: trees, miles and people. “Trees refers to conserving raw material and maximizing reuse. Miles are about transport efficiency, especially cutting empty miles. People speaks to safety and the difficult work of pallet recycling. Those are the fundamentals,” he said.
Rupert points out that most pallet companies already operate responsibly, but they don’t publicize it. His own focus is on designing pallets that protect the more valuable product on top. “Damaged product will have a bigger non-sustainable consequence than the pallet itself,” he said.
At Ongweoweh, Brett Bucktooth suggests that pallet companies utilize widely recognized frameworks. He recommends the EPA Waste Reduction Model (WARM) to calculate avoided greenhouse gas emissions, the GHG Protocol for standard emissions reporting, and Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager to track energy and water use. (Just to clarify, the calculator being developed by the Pallet Foundation will produce different numbers than the EPA WARM.)
To address illegal timber harvests, FSC and SFI certifications verify responsible wood sourcing, while the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals provide a global benchmark. “These resources strengthen credibility and ensure reporting aligns with established standards,” Bucktooth said.
For pallet suppliers, sustainability reporting should now be on their strategic radar, but responses should be measured. To Gething’s point, don’t generate numbers for the sake of numbers. They should respond to customer requirements. Likewise, Bonsall suggests a “cost-benefit” approach when considering how to respond to customers. “The things that matter, let’s focus on those,” Hartzfeld concluded. He stressed that companies shouldn’t just capture data for reporting purposes. They also should capture data as a baseline for making operational and sustainability improvements. We will get more into that in the next installment.
Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a two-part series. In the next installment, we’ll look at how pallet companies can respond in practical ways, navigate pallet broker and third-party rating requirements, and use emerging tools such as ERP upgrades and the EPD update scheduled for spring 2026.
