Need this for an audit?
We will issue the pledge on letterhead with current reconciliation figures attached.
The commitment, word for word.
No wood material entering the Pallets Recycle yard at 1113 Ingram Ave, Richmond, Virginia shall be consigned to landfill.
Material is directed, in order of preference, to: repair and return to service; dismantling for board salvage; remanufacture into accessories, crating or millwork goods; and grinding into landscape mulch, animal bedding, erosion-control fiber or biomass fuel.
Non-wood material recovered during processing — fasteners, plates, banding, film — shall be routed to appropriate recycling streams and not to landfill.
Declared exception. Wood identified as chemically treated, chemically contaminated or biologically hazardous is segregated on receipt and transferred to a licensed disposal partner. Such material is excluded from this pledge, is recorded separately, and is not counted toward our diversion figures in either direction. In the last twelve months it amounted to under one tenth of one percent of received tonnage.
This pledge has been in continuous effect since 1 December 2016 and is reconciled monthly against certified weighbridge records.
Four steps, every month.
Weigh everything in
Certified weighbridge on every inbound movement, including loads we are paid to haul rather than buy. No estimates.
Weigh everything out
Outbound platforms, mulch, bedding, biomass, scrap metal and the segregated exception stream, each on its own ticket.
Reconcile
In versus out, with yard inventory movement accounted for. A material discrepancy triggers an investigation, not a rounding.
Publish the split
Percentage returned to service versus ground to fiber, quarterly, to program customers. If the fiber percentage rises, we explain why.
A yard can hit 100% diversion and still be doing harm.
Grind every incoming pallet and you achieve perfect landfill diversion while destroying thousands of repairable platforms — and the lumber they would have displaced. Diversion from landfill and keeping wood as wood are different objectives, and only the second one matters much.
That is why we publish the reuse-versus-fiber split alongside the diversion figure. The diversion number is easy. The split is the number that can embarrass us.
Why mulch is the last resort- Zero landfill: continuous since December 2016
- Returned to service: 94.2% of recovered platforms
- Ground to fiber: 5.8%
- Declared exception stream: under 0.1% of received tonnage
- Scrap metal recovered and recycled: every pound of it