Reusable Pallets Face Density Hurdle

A survey of business practices in rural Vermont sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture has found “little need or opportunity for businesses in the study area to switch over to reusable transport packaging,” according to a summary of the study.

Anthony M. Sarkis, Waste Reduction Coordinator of the Windham Solid Waste Management District, based in Brattleboro, Vt., performed on-site visits to several pallet distributors and conducted phone interviews of 107 businesses in the study area to determine if a niche existed to switch over to reusable transport packaging, such as plastic pallets and reusable plastic containers.

“Most of the businesses in this rural study area do not fit the criteria to take advantage of a reusable transport packaging program,” writes Sarkis in his summary. “Such a program involves the need [to have] a large number of products to be received by a particular receiver or customer.”

In addition to a lack of high-volume shippers or receivers in the area, Sarkis says reverse logistics practices are not typically in place either. “In the reverse logistic step, the reusable transport packaging (either pallets, containers, or totes) would be let go from the product and returned to the distributor for reuse. This is not the case with most of the businesses in the study area, which ship small quantities of product to a variety of individual customer locations, thereby making it impossible to put in place any reverse logistic system or utilize reusable transport packaging in any way.”

Sarkis says a variety of business sectors were represented in the study, including a concrete contractor, a newspaper, painters, resorts, consultants, a general contractor, farmers and food processors, a woodworking shop, a winery, an electric company, a college, a hospital, a food co-op, a grocery store, a moving and storage firm, a lumber mill and several other types of businesses.

Although the project results found limited opportunities for the 107 businesses to switch over to reusable transport packaging, the study helped show why it is difficult to adopt reusable transport in rural regions, notes Sarkis.