Most of the environmental claims made about pallet recycling are soft. This one is not, and it is also the one least often made, which suggests the industry does not fully understand its own best argument.
Aerobic versus anaerobic decay
Wood left on the surface decays aerobically — fungi and bacteria with access to oxygen break down cellulose and lignin and release carbon dioxide. Over a few years, mulch does exactly this. The carbon returns to the atmosphere as CO₂, which is the same gas the tree took it from.
Wood buried in a landfill decays anaerobically. Compacted, capped, deprived of oxygen, it is broken down by methanogenic organisms instead, and the carbon leaves as methane rather than carbon dioxide.
Why that matters disproportionately
Methane traps substantially more heat than carbon dioxide over a short horizon. The commonly cited global warming potential is on the order of eighty times CO₂ over twenty years, falling to roughly thirty over a century as methane breaks down in the atmosphere. Either figure means the same carbon, released as methane, does far more damage in the decades that currently matter most.
So burying a wooden pallet is not merely a wasted resource. It is an active conversion of a relatively benign carbon release into a considerably worse one.
The honest complications
- Modern well-managed landfills capture a share of their gas, sometimes for energy. Capture rates vary widely by site and by regulation, and no capture system is complete.
- Wood decays slowly in a dry, compacted landfill — some buried wood is still recognisable decades later. Slow release is genuinely better than fast release, so the damage is spread rather than concentrated.
- The counterfactual matters. If the landfill alternative were combustion with energy recovery, the comparison changes substantially.
- Nobody can tell you precisely how much methane your specific pallet would have generated. This is a directional argument, not a precise one.
What we therefore say
We claim that keeping wood out of landfill avoids methane generation, and we point at the mechanism rather than at a number, because a number would require assumptions about a specific landfill's capture rate, compaction and moisture that we do not have.
What we can count precisely is tonnage: how much material entered this yard, how much left as a platform, as fiber, as scrap metal, and how much went to landfill. That last figure has been zero since December 2016, reconciled monthly against certified weighbridge tickets. The mechanism is the argument; the tonnage is the evidence.
The practical implication for a buyer
If your current end-of-life route for pallets is a mixed-waste dumpster, that material is going to landfill and generating methane for years. Changing that route is one of the few supply-chain decisions available to most operations that has a clear, mechanistically defensible climate benefit — and in our experience it usually also comes with a cheque rather than a cost.
Why the time horizon changes the answer
Global warming potential is a ratio, and it depends on the period you integrate over. Methane is a powerful absorber but it breaks down in the atmosphere within roughly a decade, converting largely to carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide persists for centuries.
So over twenty years methane's potency relative to CO₂ is on the order of eighty; over a hundred years it falls to around thirty. Both figures describe the same gas. Which one you quote is a choice about what you care about, and since the next two decades are the period in which most climate commitments fall due, the higher figure is the more decision-relevant one.
What a modern landfill does and does not do
Well-regulated sites capture a share of their gas, often burning it for energy, which converts methane to CO₂ and recovers some value. Capture rates vary enormously by site, by age of cell, by regulatory regime and by whether the cell is capped. No system captures everything, and the gas generated before a cell is capped is largely uncontrolled.
There is also a genuine complication in the other direction: wood decays slowly in a dry, compacted landfill, and buried timber decades old is often still recognisable. Slow release spreads the damage rather than concentrating it, which is better than fast release. None of this makes burying wood a good idea; it makes the magnitude uncertain rather than the direction.
Why we argue the mechanism and not a number
To put a figure on the methane avoided by one pallet, we would need to know the capture rate, compaction, moisture and cover regime of the specific landfill it would otherwise have gone to, plus the decay rate of that species at that moisture. We know none of those things, and neither does anyone else quoting you a number.
What we can count precisely is tonnage: material in, material out as platforms, as fiber, as scrap metal, as segregated exception stream. The landfill column has been zero since December 2016, reconciled monthly against certified weighbridge tickets. The mechanism is the argument and the tonnage is the evidence, and we would rather hold those two apart than blend them into a single confident figure.
What this means for your waste contract
- If wood currently leaves your site in a mixed-waste container, it is going to landfill. Mixed waste is not sorted for timber recovery in most markets.
- A separate wood stream is the whole intervention. It does not require a new supplier relationship if your existing hauler will take it to a recovery facility.
- Ask where it actually goes. "Recycled" on a waste invoice sometimes means a transfer station that lands it in the same cell.
- Weight tickets are the evidence. If your hauler cannot produce them by stream, you do not have a diversion claim, you have an assumption.
- For most sites the switch is a credit rather than a cost, because a share of what you are paying to bury has resale value.
Priya, operations · Pallets Recycle, 1113 Ingram Ave, Richmond VA · published January 20, 2026 · 987 words. Corrections welcome — tell us if we have this wrong.