Run the numbers yourself
The Reclaim Engine, with published factors.
Position statement
Reuse first.
Landfill never.
Every claim on this page is either a number we can trace to a weigh ticket or an assumption we have written down so you can argue with it. That is the whole of our environmental policy, and it is deliberately harder to write than a slogan.
Order desk
Need diversion data?
Sellers and programme customers get a signed diversion statement with weigh tickets. Tell us what you need it to cover and who has to accept it.
The pledge, in four sentences
We will always offer you the most-reused option that will do your job, even when a newer one would pay us more. We will publish the emission factors behind every environmental figure we quote, including the ones that are unflattering. We will report the tonnage we could not divert alongside the tonnage we did. And we will not describe this business as carbon neutral, climate positive or zero waste, because it is none of those things.
01The hierarchy
Reuse beats recycling by six to one
The waste hierarchy is usually drawn as a pyramid and treated as a suggestion. For bulk containers it is a measurable ratio, and the gap between the top two tiers is enormous.
| Route | kg CO₂e | vs. new | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reconditioned — wash and rebuild | 13 | 12% | The cheapest and greenest option, almost always |
| Rebottled — new bottle, reclaimed cage | 49 | 45% | Virgin interior at half the impact |
| Recycled, then bought new | 78 | 72% | Better than landfill, far worse than reuse |
| New, virgin components | 108 | 100% | The baseline everything is measured against |
Read the third row carefully, because it is the counter-intuitive one. Granulating a container and buying a new one destroys an asset worth $130 to produce a commodity worth about $6, and spends energy doing it. Recycling is genuinely good. It is simply the second-best thing, and the gap is not close.
02Measured · Q2 2026
What actually went through the yard
Unit counts from the grading station, tonnage from scale-certified weigh tickets. Updated quarterly.
41,820Containers recovered
34,693Returned to service
2,431 tMaterial diverted from landfill
101 tLandfilled — the number nobody publishes
214 tHDPE granulated to regrind
337 tSteel baled to mill
68%Wash water recovered and reused
22%Of wash feed from our own roof
03Restraint
Four things we will not say
This industry has a credibility problem, and it comes from claims that sound impressive and mean nothing. Here is what we have taken off the table.
NOT 01
“Carbon neutral”
We run four diesel trucks, a hot wash line and a granulator. We avoid far more emissions than we create, which is a different and more useful claim — and one we can show our working for.
NOT 02
“100 % recyclable”
A composite container is about 96 % recoverable by mass. The missing 4 % is gaskets, adhesive labels and residue. Anyone quoting 100 % is not counting those, and we would rather publish 96 % and be believed.
NOT 03
“Zero waste”
We landfilled 101 tonnes last quarter. It is printed above, next to the diversion figure, because a diversion percentage without a denominator is a marketing device rather than a measurement.
NOT 04
“Eco-friendly containers”
A container is not eco-friendly. A container that has been used eight times instead of once has a low impact per use. The adjective belongs to the behaviour, not the object, and the distinction matters.
04On our own site
What we do about our own footprint
Water
The wash line runs a three-stage recovery loop: the final rinse of one container becomes the first rinse of the next, solids are settled and skimmed, and only the concentrated fraction leaves as trade effluent under permit. That takes fresh water consumption from about 34 gallons per container to about 11. A 14,000 square foot roof feeds an eight-tote harvesting array we built from C-grade stock, supplying roughly a fifth of the line’s feed water annually.
Freight
Empty miles are the largest single emission we control. We route buy-back collections onto delivery return legs wherever possible and we price backhaul aggressively to encourage customers to wait for one — a discount that costs us almost nothing and saves a truck movement. Roughly two thirds of our collection volume now rides on a leg that was going to happen anyway.
Material
Granulation happens on site rather than being contracted out, which is why we can name the destination on a diversion certificate. Regrind goes to pipe, pallet and drainage manufacture; baled steel goes to an electric arc furnace on the Gulf Coast. Neither is glamorous and both are verifiable.
What we have not solved
The trucks are diesel. Electrification of a four-vehicle regional fleet with 2,500 lb payloads and 400-mile days is not currently viable for a business this size, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The wash line is gas-fired. Both are on the list; neither has a date, and we will not announce one until it is real.
?Questions
Sustainability questions
Are used IBC totes actually better for the environment?
Substantially. Reconditioning a container embodies about 13 kg CO₂e against about 108 kg for manufacturing a new one — roughly an eighth. Rebottling sits at about 49 kg. Even recycling a container and buying a new one comes out around 78 kg, which is nearly six times worse than simply washing the one you have.
Is your business carbon neutral?
No, and we will not claim it. We run four diesel trucks, a hot wash line and a granulator. What we do is avoid far more emissions than we create by keeping containers in service — but 'avoided emissions' and 'neutral' are different things and conflating them is how this industry loses credibility.
Do you offset?
No. We would rather spend the same money on wash-water recovery, rainwater capture and route density, all of which reduce actual emissions we can measure on our own site. If we ever do buy offsets we will say what, from whom, and at what price.
How do I use your figures in my own reporting?
Take the factor table, apply it to your own unit counts, and cite it as a supplier-published factor with our assumptions attached. We issue diversion certificates with scale-certified weigh tickets for anything that needs to survive an audit. If your auditor wants to challenge our factors, put them in touch — that conversation makes the numbers better.
◆On the yard
»Keep reading
End-of-life processing
Weigh tickets, destinations and certificates.
The life of a tote
Eighteen years and eight owners, tracked.