Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1040159
38 PalletCentral • September-October 2018 palletcentral.com n recent years, several Fortune 500 companies have set carbon reducing goals within their supply chains, and recent studies have shown that these efforts also reduce costs. According to the Power Forward report series, 48% of all Fortune 500 companies have some kind of clean energy target and many of the world's largest companies have already adopted clean energy practices as standard procedure. It's clear that sustainability is considered a global priority and the increased use of sustainably sourced wood packaging paves a smooth road to that destination. Wood Pallets are Recycled, Twice As carbon sinks, forests sequester carbon from the atmosphere and wood products continue to store that carbon while in use. When trees are processed into lumber and graded, about 8-10% and 50-60% of the yield is graded into low grade softwood and hardwood, respectively, which is often used to make products like wood pallets. There are billions of wood pallets in use worldwide and according to research conducted in 2018 at Virginia Tech University, 95% of all wood pallets are recycled in the U.S. Not only are new wood pallets made from the leftover part of a tree, but once a recycled wood pallet has reached the end of its life, it's recycled a second time and made into products like garden mulch and animal bedding. Reducing CO2 Emissions Virginia Tech estimates that the total number of wood pallets produced in 2016 was about 860 million, and of those about 510 million were new and 350 million were recycled. According to I Supplying Critical Data iStockphoto.com/Francesco Scatena