An plastic pallet offers very clear environmental advantages when compared to a wood block pallet, including:
Lower carbon emissions: The plastic pallet is lightweight at at less than 50 pounds, a weight comparable to expendable stringer pallets. This saves on fuel consumption and reduces greenhouse gas emissions with every load of product your business ships.
Longer lifespan: The plastic pallet can expect to make between 80 and 120 trips in its service life. In comparison, a stringer pallet is able to make about two trips and a wood block pallet about 20. The result is less energy spent harvesting materials, manufacturing materials into pallets, and repairing damaged pallets, with savings on fuel and emissions for every movement and material process.
Reduced deforestation: Wood pallets are a constant sink of valuable timber made from the trees we count on to sequester carbon and provide the very air we breathe. Around 5 billion board feet of wood was used to make pallets in 2016 alone, which represents millions of trees logged.
Invasive pest prevention: The Asian Longhorned Beetle and Emerald Ash Borer are tree-killing invasive insects that came to the U.S. on wooden packing material from overseas. The Goldspotted Oak Borer is a species native to Arizona that began killing trees when introduced to California. The plastic pallet provides no meal or incentive for wood devouring insects to hitch a ride on, an important feature for preventing outbreaks of invasive species and helping limit the spread of current outbreaks.
Eliminate chemical treatments: Since the cheap price pallet is plastic instead of wood, it doesn’t require toxic chemical treatments to keep insects, fungi, and mold from degrading the wood or being accidentally transported along with the pallet. This keeps goods transported on cheap price pallets free from contamination due to both chemicals and vermin.