The pallet you sent
to landfill cost the planet $16.95.
Palleton recovers Australian timber pallets through five proven pathways. Each one prevents some of that cost. Here's the math.
Six tiers of recovery.
Ordered by the hierarchy of intent.
The full Palleton hierarchy. Each pathway shows the Planet Price prevented per pallet, with its CO₂ equivalent below.
Two tiers in the full hierarchy are not yet quantified: Tier 3 (Recover Pallet and Use Intact Material to Make a New Pallet) and Tier 7 (Mix Crushed Pallet with Putrescible Waste). These are part of the client's recovery framework and will be added when their Planet Price models are complete.
What's behind $16.95?
The environmental cost of sending one Australian Standard Pallet to landfill — across the ten impact categories the Planet Price methodology measures.
Each figure is the cost imposed by sending one pallet to landfill. Recovery pathways prevent these proportional to where they sit on the hierarchy.
Three things the data shows.
Repair earns its keep.
Direct re-use prevents $16.95 of environmental cost per pallet. Repair-and-re-use prevents $16.34. The cost of the repair process itself is less than 4% of the value created by putting the pallet back in service — which means almost every broken pallet earns its keep when recovered.
Land Use is the headline.
Most sustainability stories lead with CO₂. Pallet recovery's biggest story is forest land. Across our pathways, Land Use accounts for 45 to 68% of the environmental cost we prevent — every pallet kept productive means timber that doesn't have to be harvested and forest that stays as forest.
Land Use leads four of five modelled pathways. Compost is the exception — there, Eutrophication prevention dominates instead.
Recovery turns waste into evidence.
Every pallet Palleton recovers for a customer produces measurable environmental data — by pathway, by impact category, in monetised terms. The figures behind this hierarchy are the figures that turn up in our customers' Scope 3 reporting, annual sustainability disclosures, and board-level ESG briefings. Recovering pallets isn't just better waste management. It's evidence.
- Methodology
- Planet Price (Cira)
- Verified pathway
- Multi-pathway pallet recovery (Palleton)
Why these numbers can be trusted.
What Planet Price is
A monetised life-cycle assessment. Every environmental impact — greenhouse gases, water use, land use, eutrophication, particulate matter, and six others — is converted into a dollar figure based on its societal cost. A negative Planet Price means the activity avoids more harm than it causes.
Who did this work
The calculations were performed by an independent LCA specialist, using the Planet Price methodology developed by Cira. Palleton commissioned the analysis but did not influence the methodology.
What's measured
Ten impact categories per pathway. Four life-cycle phases: materials, transport, use, end of life. Reference unit: one Australian Standard Pallet (1165mm × 1165mm, ~25 kg). Every pathway includes a uniform $4.75 End-of-Life credit for diverting from landfill.