SUSTAINING BUSINESSES &JOBS THROUGH PALLET REPAIR & REUSE

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3 SUSTAINING BUSINESSES &JOBS THROUGH PALLET REPAIR & REUSE BRENDA JENNIFER PLATT HYDE

4 Institute for Local Self-Reliance The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is a nonprofit research and educational organization that provides technical assistance and information to city and state government, citizen organizations, and industry. Since 1974, ILSR has researched the technical feasibility and commercial viability of environmentally sound, state-of-the-art technologies with a view to strengthening local economies. ILSR works to involve citizens, govemment, and private enterprise in the development of a comprehensive materials policy oriented towards efficiency, recycling, and maximum utilization of renewable energy sources by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. All rights reserved. Text printed on 100% recycled paper with 50% postconsumer content (processed chlorine-free). Cover printed on non-deinked recycled paper with 100% postconsumer content. Inks are 100% soy bean oil based and free of environmentally toxic metals. Except for the U.S. E.P.A., no part of this document may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Washington, DC.

5 Introduction... 1 Profiles of Model Electronics Reuse Operations Allegheny Recycled Products... 7 Big City Forest... 9 Continental Pallet Co Pallet Repair Pallet Resources of NC Appendix A Survey Data Appendix B List of Pallet Reused/Recycling Operations Appendix C Resources on Pallet Reuse Glossary... 27

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7 There is barely a piece of merchandise in America that was not transported on a pallet at some point in its life from manufacturing to use. Pallets are ubiquitous. They are the platforms (usually wooden) upon which goods sit, are sorted, stored, and moved. They are designed to accommodate the prongs of a forklift underneath for easy movement. Most industries and businesses that handle commodities utilize pallets, and lots of them. Approximately 405 million pallets are produced in the United States each year.¹ In fact, about 50% of the hardwood timber harvested in the United States each year goes into the manufacturing of new pallets. 2 The only sector using more wood than the pallet industry is the home construction industry. 3 Fully functional pallets can be rebuilt from broken or reclaimed ones. In the past, new pallets were favored for a variety of reasons. Lumber prices were low. Pallets were built cheaply, often with low-grade lumber or leftovers from furniture and construction materials production. So using reclaimed wood did not offer big cost savings. Not only are most pallets made from new wood, but they also are usually built to be used only a few times. Many pallets are designed to be discarded after a single use. Another factor that has encouraged discard of pallets is the low cost of disposal in this country. Tipping fees at disposal sites typically have been very low. So low, in fact, that in 1990 pallets users sent 4.6 million tons of pallets to landfills. In the past, the motivation to reuse and refurbish pallets was not as powerful as it is today. Lumber prices are rising, caused in part by restrictions on harvesting. The cost of disposal continues to climb. And, most importantly, using repaired pallets saves money. The industry has also begun to standardize pallet sizes. Previously, many different sizes of pallets were produced by each industry to accommodate different sized loads. Approximately 2,000 different designs of pallets exist. 4 This made it difficult to devise a reuse system for refurbished pallets where a new user could be easily found. Today, the Grocery Manufacturer's Association has instituted a standard 48 by 40 pallet, called the GMA pallet. Now GMA pallets represent almost 70% of the total, paving the way for increased pallet recovery. 5 As conditions have become more favorable for pallet reuse, businesses have sprung up across the country that refurbish broken wood pallets. Each year, the pallet industry now receives an estimated 170 million wood pallets for repair. 6 This booklet profiles five model pallet reuse operations. See Table 1. It also presents information on 31 pallet reuse businesses, who responded to our survey soliciting information on their operations and their interest in expanding and replicating. (See Appendix A.) These businesses accept pallets, sort them for reuse and repairability, repair them, and then sell the refurbished pallets back to the user or Virginia Tech Department of Wood Science and Forest Products, "Recycling Solutions for Pallet Disposal," Produced for the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, Gruder, Sherrie, Pallets: Management and Markets, University of Wisconsin Solid and Hazardous Waste Eduction Center, Madison, WI, December Guttentag, R.M., "Making Recovery Pallet-able," Resource Recycling, November Guttentag, R.M. 5. Gruder, Sherrie. 6. Virginia Tech Department of Wood Science and Forest Products. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 1

8 Introduction another buyer. Workers dismantle those pallets that cannot be repaired and cut to size salvageable parts for reuse. In many plants, remaining wooden pieces are ground into wood fiber or mulch. These operations have various degrees of automation. Some pallet rebuilders utilize disassembly and pallet stacking equipment. Assembly lines are used to sort, cut off nails, and replace broken boards. Not surprisingly, the larger the operation, the more likely they are to be automated. The repair process may require as little as replacing a single component, or as much as completely disassembling the whole pallet, salvaging sound components, and using the recycled lumber to remanufacture pallets. A survey conducted by the Center for Forest Products Marketing in 1993 found that 90% of all pallets that arrived at pallet reuse operations are either reused, rebuilt, or reclaimed for repair. Chipping and burning are the favored utilization methods for handling the remaining 10%. Chipped pallets have a variety of end uses such as mulch for landscaping, animal bedding, and fuel. Hamermills, which chip wood, are expensive pieces of equipment. Therefore, most small-sized pallet repair businesses send their scrap wood out for processing. Some businesses, not finding a market for their wood waste, burn it or send it to the landfill. Big City Forest TM Inc. burns all of its scrap wood to heat its building. One business owner reported that he burns his excess pallet waste, although he prefers to chip it. The markets simply are not there. His business is located in horse country where chipped wood is used as bedding material. Horse owners have been unwilling to use pallet bedding for fear of potential hazardous contamination from prior uses or leftover nails. The five pallet reuse operations in this booklet range from low-overhead and low-capital enterprises to facilities with complex automated systems. We selected these operations based on the portion of pallets reused/repaired, the utilization of innovative methods and structures, and/or for their ease and desire for replicability. Numerous other pallet reuse enterprises operate throughout the country. (Appendix B lists a portion of these.) Most pallet recycling companies repair and reuse pallets. Big City Forest TM Inc. is unique. It has pioneered a system to produce highvalue-added products from wood productsflooring, butcherblock tables, bookshelves, and other furniture. It utilizes a proprietary system for sorting, grading, reclaiming, drying, and remanufacturing a diverse range of products. Its products are made from oak, maple, pine, cherry, mahogany, and other types of wood pallets. Existing pallet reuse and repair operations might consider licensing the Big City Forest TM Inc. process as a way to increase their product sales and move into different wood products markets. Table 2 shows the number of jobs sustained by 30 pallet reuse operations (most of those who responded to our survey February 1996). (Also see Appendix A.) These 30 businesses employ a total of 882 people in handling more than 331,000 tons of pallets each year. On average, this translates to 28 jobs for every 10,000 tons of pallets handled-3 times the number of jobs sustained by conventional recycling processing facilities and 14 times more jobs than the number of jobs sustained by landfills and incinerators. 7 PAGE 2 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

9 Introduction The pallet reuse sector has a high job-to-ton ratio because reuse of pallets tends to be a labor-intensive activity and reuse operations typically are smaller scale than conventional recycling or disposal facilities. In general, as the size of a facility increases, fewer jobs tend to be created per ton handled. On average, the pallet reuse facilities ILSR surveyed each handle 11,400 tons of material per year. In contrast, multi-material recycling sorting and processing facilities in the U.S. handle on average 41,300 tons per year. 8 Thus, more total jobs can be created if smaller reuse and recycling facilities are built than if larger facilities are established. Repair positions at pallet reuse operations are usually entry level, requiring little prior training. Workers receive trade skills, and are paid in the range of $5 to $11 per hour. Often they receive benefits such as medical coverage and vacation leave. Repair skills are also portable between sectors and locales. One can start from the bottom and move up the job ladder acquiring skills practical in a variety of situations. The potential also exists for job skills enhancement activities. For example, Big City Forest TM Inc. houses a job training program. Workers gain skills which prepare them for jobs in the local wood manufacturing sector. Twenty two graduates of this training program have been placed in jobs. Participants in the program also receive environmental and recycling education as a part of the training. Spin-off businesses often develop around the reuse and recycling industry and the flow of materials into and out of the business. In the case of the pallet sector, small enterprises, often only one person, have sprung up to collect broken pallets and feed them to pallet repair operations. All one needs, as one entrepreneur put it, is a pickup and the shade of a tree. Businesses or factories often dump their unusable pallet supply out back eager to give it to whomever is willing to take it off their hands. And so opportunities exist for enterprising companies to fill a market niche. Business development advocates and entrepreneurs interested in starting or expanding pallet reuse enterprises should keep in mind the benefits of promoting professional pallet operations, which offer quality and follow industry standards, over those that could be characterized as fly-by-night. Mixed species butcher block table and book rase produced by Big City Forest Multi-material recycling processing facilities employ approximately 9 people per 10,000 tons per year processed, and landfills and incinerators employ about two per 10,000 tons processed. See Recycling Means Business in Baltimore, D.C., and Richmond, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Berenyi, Eileen, The Materials Recycling and Processing Industry in the United States: Yearbook, Atlas, and Directory, Governmental Advisory Associates, New York, New York, Even the Department of Defense is jumping into the pallet repair picture. Hampered by rules that restricted the reuse of military goods, one half million dollars per year worth of used pallets and packing materials from the Defense Distribution Depot in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania (DDSP) were ending up in the local landfill. The waste was particularly notable as the military uses high-grade lumber for its pallets. Prompted by initiatives from the Clinton administration to reduce and recycle waste at the Federal level, those pallets are now repaired and recycled instead. Several individuals at the Army depot instituted a program to collect the used pallets, refurbish the repairable ones, and dismantle the rest. Component pieces are used to build new pallets or are sold to local entrepreneurs. Every bit of scrap is recovered including the nails and sawdust. The pallet repair operation employs six people who utilize simple equipment, a nail gun and automatic pallet stacker, which allows them to make fifteen refurbished pallets per hour. Those pallets are sold for about $3 per pallet, a big improvement over paying a tipping fee at the landfill and saving the military untold dollars for all the pallets it now does not have to replace. Unusable pallets are sold to outside wood recycling enterprises. Everything is utilized, money is saved, and jobs have been created. For this program DDSP has received the White House Closing the Circle Award for its recycling program. Seurces: Glenn, Jim, Keeping the Defense Department out of the Landfill, BioCycle, April 1996; and Evening News Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, February 19%. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 3

10 Introduction In 1995 there were 3,793 pallet firms of which 41% were in the pallet repair business full time. 9 Many companies are still making pallets from virgin wood and could, with minimal expenditure, convert to a pallet repair operation. Most of the pallet recycling firms ILSR surveyed expressed desire to replicate their operations. All of these firms are professional pallet repair operations. Some companies are looking to expand on site or in a new location, others such as Big City Forest TM Inc. offer licenses for replication, or some simply provide consulting advice on start up. While pallet repair businesses are becoming more and more common, an enormous quantity of pallets is still discarded without repair or salvage. In 1993, six times more pallets were discarded than reclaimed, equaling an 86% disposal rate. 10 Wood waste overall has a 9.6% recovery rate. 11 The 4.6 million pallets landfilled each year could create 13,000 new jobs in existing or new pallet repair operations. Thus operations repairing pallets or manufacturing high-value products from pallets offer opportunities to reduce waste and create jobs. More durable pallets and operations that convert pallets into low-value products such as mulch and fuel do not offer the same business and local economic development opportunities. The pallet industry is already very competitive and the number of businesses involved in pallet 9. McCurdy, Dwight, and Phelps, John, "The Pallet Industry in the US.," Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, July Gruder, Sherrie, Pallets: Management and Markets. 11. American Forest and Paper Association in cooperation with USDA Forest Service, National Wood Recycling Directory, January PAGE 4 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

11 Introduction recovery continues to increase. Only a small portion of these are National Wooden Pallet Container Assocation Pallet Professionals TM. Customer demand for both quality pallets and reused pallets will help sustain growth of new and existing professional businesses in the pallet repair sector. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 5

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13 Before starting Allegheny Recycled Products, William Biedenbach had been in the garbage hauling business for 20 years. About 3 years ago, at the time he decided to sell the hauling business, he put together different available components to grind and color recycled wood into mulch. He sold the hauling business, but held onto the wood recycling division. Allegheny Recycled Products developed from the wood recycling part of his former hauling business. At first, waste wood was ground and sold as boiler fuel. Then the ground wood was colored as mulch. Then Biedenbach realized the potential in the pallet material he was receiving and developed a pallet repair operation, as well. Allegheny Recycled Products reuses, repairs, and recycles pallets. Through these three activities, Allegheny is able to create a product from all pallets received and there is virtually no waste. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 7

14 Allegheny Recycled Products When the pallets are received they are graded; reusable as is, repairable, able to be harvested, and junk. Reusable pallets are inventoried and stacked for resale. Repairable pallets are sent to the repair area for repair and grading, and then are inventoried. Those pallets able to be harvested are sent to the disassembly area and junk pallets are sent outside to await grinding which happens on an as-needed basis., There is one worker at the disassembly area. The worker uses a bandsaw to cut through the nails in the pallet in order to disassemble it. As the pallet is disassembled, the worker separates the pieces into type (deckboards and stringers). The worker then sends the good boards from this process to the pallet repair area or to the pallet rebuilding area. The one worker in the pallet repair area removes the bad boards from the pallet and replaces them with good boards from the pallet disassembly process. A third line builds new pallets using wood from the disassembly process: This line has just been outfitted with new machinery which will allow Allegheny Recycled Products to build more pallets. This new machinery sends the pallet down an assembly line where workers will assemble boards on a pallet template. At' the end of the line, the pallets will be automatically stacked. Rebuilt pallets are graded and inventoried. Allegheny stores broken boards outside. Once a sufficient amount has accumulated (about every three months), Allegheny rents a shredder and shreds the broken boards into mulch. Some of the mulch is sold as-is and some is sent to another site in Murrysville, PA for coloring. There an associate company has five acres dedicated to mulching and coloring. Mulch is colored with an elevated screw auger conveyor. Allegheny shreds the poorest quality wood (wood from the pressed woodchip pallets). It is used as sludge thickener at the local landfill. PAGE 8 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

15 In 1994 Bronx 2000, a nonprofit local development corporation in the South Bronx, created Big City Forest TM Inc. (BCF), a for-profit reclaimed wood manufacturing business. BCF receives discarded wood shipping containers and pallets; reclaims and remills these; and makes new solid wood products. The enterprise has three operating divisions: pallet making, reclaimed lumber sales and distribution, and furniture, flooring, and specialty building materials manufacturing. Most pallet recycling companies repair and reuse pallets. BCF is unique. It has pioneered a system to produce high-value-added products from wood pallets-flooring, butcherblock tables, bookshelves, and other furniture. Its flooring gives the raw material a market value equivalent to $1,200 per ton and its furniture, $6,000 per ton. In contrast, a ton of wood ground into chips and used in fiberboard commands $30 per ton. BCF advances the mission-driven values of its parent company, Bronx In addition to producing goods from reclaimed wood, BCF aims to attract private capital to the South Bronx, create blue-collar jobs and training opportunities, help local business and government reduce disposal costs, divert waste from landfills and incinerators, conserve forest and timberland, and protect the environment. Indeed, BCFs operations help Bronx 2000 meet these goals. In conjunction with its wood reclaiming enterprise, Bronx 2000 operates a woodworking job training program that provides participants with basic environmental and recycling education and prepares them for entry-level jobs in the local wood products manufacturing industry. In the first year of the program, Bronx 2000 placed 22 training program graduates. According to CEO David Muchnick every 100,000 square feet of flooring produced by BCF saves local businesses $35,000 in 'waste disposal costs, diverts 135 tons of waste from disposal, creates 7,300 hours of work for its employees, and conserves one billion BTUs of energy and 22 acres of forest. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 9

16 Big City Forest BCF receives discarded pallets from more than 60 New York businesses. Many of the 180,000 pallets it receives each year are refurbished and sold back to these businesses. This part of the operation-representing closed-loop recycling-uses conventional pallet repair techniques. However, what makes BCF unique in the field is its pallet remanufacturing process, which converts discarded pallets into highvalue added products. BCF utilizes a proprietary system for sorting, grading, reclaiming, remilling, drying, controlling the quality of discarded wood, and for remanufacturing a diverse range of products. It makes products from oak, maple, pine, cherry, mahogany, and other species of wood. The processing and remanufacturing system adapts, reconfigures, and sequences production using conventional equipment and techniques (such as denailing, drying, joining, and planing) in a proprietary manner. In response to the diversity of incoming wood and the variety of finished products, the system is designed to be flexible and labor-intensive. It is also designed to optimize the quantity and quality of the reclaimed wood and to minimize the capital equipment cost. PAGE 10 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

17 Continental Pallet Company is a commercial firm that supplies pallets, pallet repair, and pallet disposal services to customers in West Texas. Continental began by repairing pallets for a customer in the storage business. Seeing that it was a profitable venture they opened a stand alone facility in 1984 and now handle almost 1000 pallets per day. pallets are sorted into three categories; pallets which can be repaired, pallets which can be dismantled, and waste pallets. Repairable pallets are repaired to the best possible grade, pallets which cannot be repaired are dismantled to generate components for repair, and waste pallets are burned. Pallets are collected in company trailers and returned to the plant for processing. Incoming Pallet repair involves an initial inspection to evaluate damage, removal and replacement of broken deck boards, appropriate repair to any damaged stringers and a final quality inspection. Finished goods are inventoried for shipment. Dismantling pallets requires use of a Pallet Kat bandsaw dismantler or a Trio shear dismantler. Dismantled pallet pieces are trimmed to uniform lengths for use as repair components. Waste generated by repair and waste pallets are dumped by hoppers into an above ground air curtain destructor which burns the material. Prior to installation of this machine, Continental operated a grinding system. Limited markets for ground pallet material required this switch to burning of waste material. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 11

18 Continental Pallet Co. Gordon Wilkerson of Continental sees the following issues affecting growth and replicability issues in the future. The pallet recycling industry has changed dramatically in the past ten years. The industry expects to see continuing emphasis on establishing uniform quality standards for repair and finished goodsa difficult task in what has traditionally been an entrepreneurial driven industry. Large volume pallet users will continue to demand better quality and consistent service. Pallets constructed of material other than wood and pallet rental programs are among factors which will ensure further rapid change for the industry. Automating repair processing represents another significant industry challenge. Wilkerson predicts that companies which utilize automation will achieve safer, more cost effective, and efficient work places and will be among the industry s strongest in the future. PAGE 12 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

19 Pallet Repair, Inc. is a medium-sized wooden pallet repair company. It has three main departments: (1) repairing old pallets, (2) manufacturing pallets from old pallets, and (3) taking apart old pallets so that the wood can be reused. The operation represents a closed-loop recycling system in that many of its pallet suppliers are also its customers for pallets. Jay Fick started out by buying an existing small operation. In 1989 he had 6 employees, now he has 30 and continues to expand. He moved to his current site in 1991 and expanded into an adjoining site in Pallet Repair has been one of the first in the business to move to a production line basis on any scale. In January 1995 Pallet Repair installed a semi-automated production line and a completely automated pallet stacking system. In October, it installed a second production line. Benefits of the new system include more efficient use of space and eliminating much of the heavy lifting workers previously did. The company ships out 8,000 to 10,000 pallets every week. No waste is disposed. The 100 cubic yards of wood waste generated each week are picked up by a private contractor and ground for mulch. Jay Fick is interested in expanding and replicating his business elsewhere. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 13

20 Pallet Repair, Inc. Pallets picked up or delivered are unloaded and stacked in the yard. At any one time there may be 40,000 to as many as 125,000 pallets stockpiled. Last year Pallet Repair turned its inventory over about ten times. About 85% of the pallets received are repaired for reuse. The other 15% is taken apart for parts and used to build pallets. Standard pallets are repaired on the first production line. A forklift driver moves the pallets to a powered feeder line. An inspector removes the middle board. A second production line worker operates the deck master, a machine that removes the lead deck board. The third production line worker is a top nailer, who replaces any top board. needing replacement. The fourth production line worker is a bottom nailer who does the same for bottom boards. The fifth worker repairs or replaces any broken or cracked stringers. This person either stamps a metal plate, with a machine, on the crack to repair the stringer in the case of cracks, or he adds a companion or sister stringer along the side stringer to reinforce it. The sixth person is a grader, who inspects and then grades the pallets one by one. He feeds the repaired pallet into an automatic stacking system. A simple push of a button from him sends the pallet along a transfer conveyor to one of four stackers depending on the grade. The stacking system is fully automatic and computerized. It counts and totals the pallets. Each stacker holds 20 pallets. When full, the stack is transferred to outmoving roller conveyors, where a forklift operator can transfer the stack for stockpiling or directly into trailers for outgoing deliveries. The second production line is similar to the first one, but it's a two- to three-person line for just specialty pallets. A "unnail" department takes apart pallets that cannot be repaired so that the wood can be reused for repairing other pallets. Three people do this in a covered area outside. One operates a forklift, two others operate a machine that helps take the pallet apart. A third department manufactures pallets from reclaimed lumber and sometimes new wood. Although several people do this, it is not a production line. They each work individually. PAGE 14 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

21 The secret to Pallet Resource of NC, Inc.'s tremendous success in terms of volume of material handled, negligible discard rate, and employment is the full scale service that it offers to its customers. Businesses prefer to use as few service providers as possible and Pallet Resource can accommodate virtually any pallet need: repair, collection, delivery, disposal. Pallet Resource accepts all broken, wooden pallets. Approximately 85% are repaired, the rest are dismantled and the salvageable parts cut to size for reuse. The remaining wooden pieces are ground into wood fiber with Pallet Resource's hammermill for end use as animal bedding, mulch, or playground cushion materials. Nothing is wasted! In fact, Pallet Resource calculates that by diverting broken pallets from the landfill, it saves 4.5 million board feet or 15,000 trees per year. This amounts to an annual savings of 120,000 cubic yards of landfill space. Pallet Resource is involved in exploring new uses for pallets through association with a training program at Virginia Tech's School of Forestry. Sample boards have been taken back to the lab for value-added product research, particularly flooring. Some businesses are wary of the changing nature of the pallet industry towards centralization. However, Pallet Resource sees the combined trends of recycling, objection to landfilling, and rising raw material prices as an environment in which pallet reuse operations can flourish. INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 15

22 Pallet Resource of NC, Inc. Incoming pallets are manually sorted by size and condition. The stacks of pallets are stored outside, then those deemed repairable are transported by forklift to the repair area. The operator removes and replaces the broken pallet components using special pry bars, hammers and pneumatic air guns. The fully repaired pallet is then delivered to the customer. If the pallet is deemed not repairable, but has reusable component parts, it is disassembled for those parts. The pallet is transferred to a separated disassembly area where salvaged boards are cut to acceptable and reusable length with cut-off saws and disassembly machines. Component parts can be utilized for customized pallets, not readily available on the secondary market, reducing customer costs and saving virgin resources. Those pallets that cannot be reused or disassembled are pulverized in a hammermill into wood fiber. Large chips are used for fuel and mulch, small chips for animal bedding or playground cushion material. The equipment for these processes can be very expensive especially for large volumes and for producing wood fibers to specification. PAGE 16 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

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24 ~~ Appendix A PAGE 18 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

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28 Appendix B PAGE 22 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

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30 Appendix B PAGE 24 INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE

31 American Forest and Paper Association in cooperation with USDA Forest Service, National Wood Recycling Directory, January 1996, AF&PA, th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, D.C tel: (202) Berenyi, Eileen, The Materials Recycling and Processing Industry in the United States: Yearbook, Atlas, and Directory, Governmental Advisory Associates, 1995, 25 Sylvan Road South--Suite E, Westport, CT tel: (203) Center for Forest Products Marketing, Department of Wood Science and Forest Products, Virginia College of Forestry- and Wildlife Resources, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1650 Ramble Road, Blacksburg, VA , tel: (540) Center for Forest Products Marketing, Department of Wood Science and Forest Products, Recycling Solutions for Pallet Disposal, produced for the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, Cleveland Associates, Review of Costs to Operate the Grocery Industry Pallet System, FMI and GMA, Washington, DC, 11 September Crissey, Donald and Peggy, Fun Projects Using Wooden Pallets, Applecart Press (409) Darrow, C., Counting on Wood Recovery, Resource Recycling, February Evening News-Harrisburg, PA, 7 July Glenn, Jim, Keeping the Defense Department out of the Landfill, BioCycle, April Gruder, Sherrie, Pallets: Management and Markets, University of Wisconsin Solid and Hazardous Waste Education Center, Madison, WI, December 1994, 610 Langdon Street, Rm. 529, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703, tel: (608) Guttentag, R.M., Making Recovery Pallet-able, Resource Recycling, November Harler, Curt, Pulling Down Profits from Wood Debris, Recycling Today, March McCurdy, Dwight, and Phelps, John, The Pallet Industry in the U.S., Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, July National Wooden Pallet and Container Association (NWPCA), 1800 North Kent Street, Suite 911, Arlington, Virginia , tel: (703) Pallets: Supporting the Industry, Recycling Today, January Saphire, D., Delivering the Goods: Benefits of Reusable Shipping Containers, INFORM, Inc., INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 25

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33 block rectangular, square or cylindrical deck spacer, often identified by its location within the pallet deckboard one or more boards or panels comprising the top or bottom surface of the pallet length refers to the stringer or stringer-board; also refers to the first dimension given to describe a pallet, i.e., 48 by 40, where 48 is the pallet stringer/stringerboard length National Wooden Pallett and Container Association a national association with the goal of promoting the design, manufacture, distribution, recycling and sale of pallets, containers, and reels pallet portable, horizontal, rigid platform used as a base for assembling, storing, stacking, handling, and transporting goods as a unit load, often equipped with a superstructure, designed for horizontal and vertical movement returnable/reusable pallet a pallet designed to be used for more than one trip shipping pallet pallet designed to be used for single one-way trip from shipper to receiver: it is then disposed skid a pallet having no bottom deck, designed only for horizontal movement stringer wood runners to which the deckboards are fastened, and which serve as a spacer between the top and bottom decks to permit the entry of mechanical handling devices For a more detailed glossary, contact the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, 1800 North Kent Street, Suite 911, Arlington, Virginia, , (703) INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE PAGE 27

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