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Sustainability

After a wooden pool pallet reaches the end of its service life (4 years), it is discarded to be burnt as firewood, mulched as animal bedding or dumped in landfill sites. Even worse are the one-way wooden pallets that generally last only for one or two trips before being discarded. In contrast, LOMOLD™ Pallets are re-usable waste, easy to recycle and last 10 years on average. 

The plastic crate industry has built a very good model where broken crates are recycled into new crates, and damaged LOMOLD™ Pallets can similarly be recycled back into pallets in a true cradle-to-cradle recycling loop. However, LOMOLD™ pallets have a significant advantage over crates due to the fact that its material will be in general unsuitable for other products and can mainly be used by LOMOLD™ to produce new products – reducing theft and attrition. 

In addition, several studies have pointed to deforestation as having a major impact on global warming – even more so than all of the cars in the world combined. Only 7 wooden pallets are made from each hardwood tree – these trees take 30 years to grow to maturity. Coupled with the fact that there are 7 pallets for each citizen in developed countries, it is easy to see that wooden pallets are a major cause of deforestation. LOMOLD™ Pallets offer the opportunity to create an “asset base” of material that is continuously recycled and kept in service indefinitely – reducing the impact on the environment tremendously.

Further, the weight savings of the LOMOLD™ Transport Pallet means fuel savings in transport – each load on LOMOLD™ Transport Pallets will contribute towards reducing emissions and impact positively on climate change. The fact that 3 out of every 4 trucks needed to transport empty pallets is avoided when using LOMOLD™ Transport Pallets has an even greater impact on carbon emissions and transport costs.

Every wooden pallet that crosses EU country borders and international borders has to be heat-treated or fumigated with environmentally harmful chemicals. LOMOLD™ Transport Pallets are hygienic and clean, so no such treatment is necessary.

The LOMOLD™ Pallet, coupled to the innovative LOMOLD™ Pallet System, is sustainable both in environmental and economical terms. Eco-friendly benefits of the LOMOLD™ system include the prevention of deforestation, the creation of a reusable and recyclable asset base of materials, substantial reductions in transport and the avoidance of harmful chemicals used to fumigate wooden pallets.

These benefits are powerful in their own right – however, when coupled to an economically viable and justifiable model, they become a prime example of how environmental sustainability and business sustainability can be mutually inclusive. For example:

One LOMOLD™ Pallet used = One tree saved

 

One tree is used to make 7 wooden pallets that last 3-4 years. A LOMOLD™ Pallet lasts for 10 years or longer, increases utilization rates by 20% or more and can easily be recycled into a new pallet, extending the service life to more than 20 years – meaning that one tree can be saved for every LOMOLD™ Pallet used.