2025 on the weigh tickets

The figures

Empty miles: the one we fixed

Last year's report complained that empty running had risen to 34 %, driven by growth in Dallas–Fort Worth delivery volume without matching collection volume on the return leg. We said the fix was commercial rather than operational and that the buy-back desk would be measured on it.

It worked. Metroplex collection volume rose 61 % on the year, the northbound-full-southbound-empty imbalance largely closed, and total empty miles came down five points to 29 %. On roughly 340,000 fleet miles that is around 17,000 fewer empty miles, or somewhere near 27 tonnes of CO₂e that did not happen.

The mechanism was almost entirely pricing. We made backhaul collection pricing explicit on the DFW corridor, put it in the first reply to every enquiry rather than waiting to be asked, and the volume followed. Nothing about the trucks changed.

Rebottling: the reason the reuse rate moved

6,140 rebottles against 4,880 the year before. That 26 % increase is the single largest contributor to the reuse rate improvement, and it comes from two things: a second bottle supplier, which removed the stock constraint that used to cap the line at about a hundred a week, and customers increasingly asking for it by name.

That second point is the more interesting one. Rebottling used to be something we suggested; it is increasingly something customers arrive already wanting. Every point of reuse rate is roughly 400 containers that stayed containers, which on our published factors is about 38 tonnes of CO₂e.

The figure we cannot move

Landfill tonnage. 97 tonnes against 94, essentially flat in absolute terms and marginally improved per container. The non-recoverable fraction is gaskets, adhesive labels, valve elastomers and residual product, and after two years of looking we have found no route for any of it.

• The gasket recovery trial failed in 2024 — volumes too small, material too contaminated to interest a processor.
• A label-adhesive separation trial in the spring produced a stream nobody wanted at a cost nobody would pay.
• Residual product is by definition waste and is disposed of according to its waste code. There is no version where that changes.

So the honest position is that 4 % is where we are and we do not currently have a plan to improve it. If somebody reading this has solved gasket recovery at small scale, we would genuinely like to hear from you.

Method

Unchanged from last year. Container counts from the grading station log, one row per unit. Tonnage from scale-certified weigh tickets, retained seven years, available to any customer for their own containers. Carbon figures calculated against a stated virgin-purchase baseline using the factors published on the Eco Impact page — estimates, and labelled as such. Water from the line's own meters. Empty miles from fleet telematics.

If a number here looks wrong, tell us. Three corrections in the last four years have come from customers checking our arithmetic, and every one of them improved the report.