Recycled Pallets - Cutting Costs and Waste

With the volume and cost of pallets used by the business, we asked ourselves if we could recycle and reuse them. The answer was yes.

When it comes to sustainability at GH Commercial, we Believe in Better. At every opportunity, we look for ways we can improve our processes under our 3R program (Reclaim – Recycle – Reprocess), which diverts flooring from landfill. Now, it’s a principle we’re applying to the pallets we obtain for yarn and transportation.

With the volume of yarn pallets coming into the business, together with the high cost of single-use transport pallets, and their end-of-life disposal, our team asked the question, “can we reuse these?”. The answer, after some investigation, was “yes”.

Given the global timber shortage and increasing landfill (plus the toxins and greenhouse gases associated with treated timber), recycling to divert it from scrap is more important than ever.

Rework It, Don’t Waste It

We conducted a review that found two types of treated pallets coming into the business – including imported yarn pallets, and locally made transport pallets. In asking how we could adapt these to be reused, we found five types of pallets across different sites that required different modifications to suit their needs.

Our tile plant, for instance, required a flat top pallet to prevent flooring from warping while being shipped. Our Geelong facility where yarn is stored, noticed that some suppliers delivered yarn using a flat top similar to the pallets used in our tile plant, while our Truganina warehouse needed a variety of pallet sizes.

We spoke with our suppliers about how they could modify their pallets to suit our various uses.

A Change for the Better

In collaborating with our local pallet supplier, Marshall Pine, we made a significant and immediate improvement. They were able to adjust their pallets to include a flat plyboard top, so our tile plant and warehouse could reuse them for safe shipping and storage.

They also buy back 95% of our stock which they’re able to sell onward. This has significantly reduced our purchase price and eliminated our scrap fees – resulting in a huge cost saving to the business, and the environment, on a shared resource used across all our sites.

Our collaboration with Marshall Pine has opened the door to new opportunities for regeneration across GH Commercial. And we continue to look for new ways to ensure we not only Believe in Better but follow through on our sustainability promise. 

READ MORE ABOUT OUR SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY

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