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Reuse
Repair
Recycle

In this day of environmental responsibility, everyone is looking for answers to their solid waste problems. And for materials handling professionals, the question for the new millennium might be "How do I get rid of these unneeded pallets?" After all, pallets do tend to stack up outside the loading dock, and land filling is no longer an option in many areas. It's become such a problem that many companies are looking at alternative pallet materials in order to get ahead of the environmental game.
   Wooden pallets have advantages that other materials can't touch. For starters, wood comes from trees, a renewable resource. That's not true of many other pallet alternatives. You can build pallets in a variety of ways to be used... and reused... and reused... countless times. Wood pallets are made up of a number of components connected with fasteners. If a component should break, your wood pallet can be repaired. And whether you choose single-use or multiple-use pallets for your operation, wood pallets can be recycled when they come to the end of their useful life.
   Wood is the only pallet material that can offer all these alternatives. Table 1 shows how other materials stack up, illustrating graphically that wood is the only material providing answers to your environmental concerns.

• TABLE 1
  Environmental Scorecard For Pallet Materials
  Material	Wood	Metal	Plastic	Corrugated
  Renewable Resources	YES	no	no	yes
  Reusable	YES	yes	yes	no
  Repairable	YES	yes, expensive	no	no
  Recyclable	YES	yes	sometimes	yes

  Wood is the only pallet and container material that meets the Four R's criteria: it is reusable, repairable, recyclable and comes from a renewable resource.
• Wood is a renewable resource. most other pallet materials come from non-renewable resources such as the petro-chemicals used to make plastics and ores used to make metals.*
• Studies have shown that wood is a very energy efficient material to produce, process and transport.
• The pallet and container industry provides an excellent market for grades of lumber unsuitable for use in furniture, cabinets, etc.
  

REUSE
More and more companies are looking at reusable pallets to solve today's environmental as well as practical materials handling challenges. the fact is, the savings are significant if you consider the life cycle cost of your pallets instead of merely basing your purchasing decisions on the purchase price alone. Spending pennies more at the front end can increase the longevity of your wood pallet. What's more, you achieve source reduction, which is established by the Environmental Protection Agency as the first, and preferred, means of solid waste management. It's just common sense -- if you have your pallets built with durability in mind, you'll have less waste to get rid of because your pallets will last longer.

REPAIR
In the rigorous real world of materials handling, pallets are the workhorses. No wonder they get damaged. Another positive aspect of wood pallets, however, is that they can be repaired. Repaired pallets have advantages, too; the lumber is already dry, reducing weight and alleviating shrinkage. Using appropriate components including sound lumber and high quality fasteners, wood pallets can be repaired to their original level or performance. Whatever your repair needs, Goeman's Wood Products, Inc., is the key.

RECYCLE
What do you do when your pallets cannot be repaired -- when they've come to the end of their useful life? More and more, landfills are closing their doors to pallets -- regardless of the material from which they are made. Traditionally, wood pallets have been disassembled and used for firewood or other products. In many parts of the country, this is still a viable recycling method. But these more complicated environmental times call for high-tech solutions.
   Today's pallet suppliers have the answers. Wood pallets can be processed into a fiber resource for a variety of uses. That gets your unusable pallets off your hands, and assures the fiber will be reused yet again in a positive manner to create another generation of products. Various markets are currently available for this wood fiber, ranging from boiler fuel to landscape mulch.

• The pallet industry receives an estimaged 17 million wood pallets for repair and recycling each year -- and that number is growing.**
• Of the more than 2.6 billion board feet of lumber from pallets received for recycling each year, about 2.3 billion board feet is reused in pallets.**
• An estimated 300 million board feet of lumber from used pallets and pallet parts were processed to create new products from the resulting fiber.**
• Wood fiber created from worn out pallets is used to create such diverse products as fuel pellets, insulation, pressed logs, decorative landscape mulches, home building materials and many other environmentally friendly items.

RENEWABLE RESOURCE
The bottom line about wood pallets is that the resource used to make them is renewable. To make wood pallets, you don't have to use petrochemicals or mine ore. Instead, the environmental stewardship practiced by foresters is such that trees used to make pallets are replanted at a higher rate than they are cut. today's forestry practices assure plentiful wood fiber for today -- and, even more important, for tomorrow. Combined with the reusable aspects of wood pallets, the renewable wood fiber resource is a near-perfect alternative.
   What's more, trees aren't necessarily cut down just to build wood pallets. They're chosen for a variety of uses, including furniture, casegoods, construction materials. The wood used for pallets is often the leftover" lumber which, due to smaller size, aesthetic or physical defects is unusable for these higher end products. Wood pallet manufacturers and recyclers cut out these defects and use the remaining perfectly good resource to handle a myriad of materials handling needs. The wood pallet industry is at the forefront when it comes to environmental stewardship.

• Today's forester's use sustainable forestry initiatives to accomplish these goals, planting far more trees than are harvested.*
• On average, the forest products industry plants six trees for every one harvested.*
• The forest industry plants more than 43 percent of all seedlings planted in a given year (private land owners plant 41 percent and the government plants 16 percent).*

RESPONSIBILITY
Today, people from all walks of life are becoming aware of our responsibility to care for the environment. For the pallet industry, this responsibility means ensuring natural resources are used wisely, the proper emphasis is placed on reuse and recycling, and that harvesting is done scientifically with less disturbance to ecosystems.
   Using a natural, renewable material isn't enough to protect our planet. We need to nurture and care for our resources as well. The pallet and container industry and the broader forest products industry support and use scientific, ecosystem-sensitive forest management practices. These methods provide wood for thousands of products while maintaining the integrity of our forests for recreation, wildlife, plant and animal diversity and water, soil and air quality.

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