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Cradle-to-Grave Life-Cycle Assessment of Wooden Pallet Production in the United States 5 Wood preparation Use phase Recycle/reuse Waste treatment Pallet construction and treatment Forest management/operations Recovery of wooden pallet Emissions to air, water, land Hardwood/softwood lumber production Electricity Nails/staple Paint Lubricants Fuel Water Raw material acquisition UPSTREAM CORE DOWNSTREAM Product manufacturing Natural resources Coproducts: Dry sawdust Figure 1. Life-cycle of generic wooden pallet production in the United States. Figure 2. Schematic diagram of a stringer pallet (notched). 1.2.1 Representativeness of the Facility Data In 2016, total estimated wood pallet production was about 513 million new pallets and 326 million repaired or remanufactured pallets (Gerber 2018, Gerber and others 2020). Two different surveys were sent to NWPCA facilities. One was to collect data for new pallet manufacturing. The second survey was sent to repaired–remanufactured pallet producers to model the pallet repair phase. Participating facilities are distributed across the United States and represent overall production from new-pallet and repair– remanufacturing facilities. For data collection from new- pallet facilities, the greatest contribution was from the southern United States with 18 respondents, followed by the northeastern United States with 10 facilities responding. Nine facilities in the Midwest responded, and three in the western United States responded. The pallet manufacturing inventory was developed based on primary (foreground) data collected from 40 new-pallet manufacturing facilities and more than 35 repair–remanufacturing facilities. Annual pallet production of the participating facilities was about 49,790,000 for new pallet production and 37,950,000 for repaired–remanufactured pallets, which was about 10% and 12% of the total production in 2018, respectively.

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