How to Recycle Shipping Pallets

Millions of pallets are used and discarded every year. Recycling is a much better option.

With landfills becoming full and reluctant to take in more wooden pallets, recycling shipping pallets has gained not only acceptance but popularity. Craftsmen and designers are creating furniture, housing, garden benches and lawn furniture out of used wooden pallets. Shipping pallets can be used as firewood once they’re disassembled or used to build chicken coops or a goat shed. The ways of using shipping pallets for creative and attractive projects is nearly endless.

Things You'll Need

• Hammer
• Nails
• Paint

Instructions

1. Build something. People have used pallets to build housing for French students in Paris, sheds, Adirondack chairs and chaise lounges, raised bed gardens, walkways through a garden, fences, decks, birdhouses, tree forts, compost bins and even guitars. Most shipping pallets are made of hardwood, and once sanded and cleaned, a pallet is just free lumber.

2. Call friends if you’re not a project person. Perhaps your friends are builders and crafters or would love the free firewood. If no one is interested, join Freecycle and list the pallets for free pickup. Freecycle and Craigslist are both helpful in finding people interested in whatever you’d like to get rid of.

3. Donate the pallets to charity or to other recyclers. Many areas now have a ReStore near them, which is a store that sells recycled objects and home improvement surplus. Some charities will accept wooden pallets, such as Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.

4. Contact pallet companies to come and pick up the pallets. Many new pallets are made of components from recycled old pallets. Pallet recycling companies will pick up your pallets, but they may specify a necessary quantity of 100 or 250 pallets before they’ll make the trip.

5. Disassemble the pallets and sell the lumber. As long as you tell the buyer where the wood came from, there shouldn’t be any problem. Pile up the lumber at the end of your driveway (in rural areas) and put a For Sale sign on it. You never know when a passer-by might call.

Tips & Warnings

• If you use the pallets for firewood, disassemble them and remove the nails. You don't need nails in your wood stove or fireplace.

References

• Green Diary; Weird Amelot Building Uses Nothing But Wooden Pallets; Garima Goel; 2011
• USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station: Pallets: A Growing Source of Recycled Wood; Robert Bush, et al.

Resources

• Green Eco Services; 31 Ways to Reuse Wood Pallets; 2008