Pallet Wrap is a mainstay of warehouses, distribution centres & retail environments. It is also the most valuable scrap material that these types of business can recover. In order to get and maximise the value created from recycling pallet wrap, you need to bear a few things in mind. This article helps you to maximise the returns you can get from recycling pallet wrap.

Entire Recycling are specialists in recycling pallet wrap for industry and work for some of the largest distribution centres, bonded warehouses & retailers across the UK. If you have volumes of pallet wrap & would like more help than this article can give or if you would like to sell your pallet wrap to us, please give us a call on the number at the top of the page.

What is Pallet Wrap?

Pallet wrap is most commonly made of low density polyethylene, or LDPE and is used by manufacturers and distributors to bind products to pallets for ease of transportation.

Pallet wrap is one of the largest components of a warehouse’s waste stream and, if it is not recycled, it costs money to be taken away & landfilled. This is not only an environmental waste but it is also a huge waste of money.

Large warehouses can generate 40 tonnes a week of pallet wrap for recycling. When recyclers will pay hundreds of pounds per tonne for the best quality wrap, it is easy to see how this material can add significant amounts to a company’s bottom lone.

Pallet wrap often arrives in a clean, uncontaminated state at these businesses. If businesses can keep the wrap this way, the amount they can earn form recycling pallet wrap can be maximised.

Preparing Pallet Wrap for Sale & Getting the Best Price

In order to prepare pallet wrap for sale, the following factors need to be kept in mind:

• Weight – the more pallet wrap can be moved at any one time, the more a business can add to its bottom line. The best way to do this is to buy or rent a plastic baler which can compact pallet wrap and create palletised bales of plastic that can be easily transported
• Segregation – clear plastic commands a higher premium than coloured plastic (which can only be recycled into plastics that are black in colour) and so it is important to segregate the clear from the coloured  (or jazz) film
• Contamination – the cleaner the product, the more recyclable it is. If the pallet wrap can be sent for recycling free of labels, it will command a higher value
• Contracts – if you have a regular volume of pallet wrap and are prepared to enter into an agreement with a recycling company, you can get a better rate as they will be better able to work with you & your staff to ensure that the value is maximised and they will be able to bank upon a consistent volume of plastic and pass on any benefits they get from being able to sell larger volumes

Collecting, Storing & Baling Pallet Wrap Easily

The benefits of recycling pallet wrap can be huge for businesses but it is important that these benefits aren’t eroded by increasing time & burdens being placed on the staff. If too much staff time is spent collecting the wrap, any of the value saved can be quickly eroded.

Businesses should be thinking about how to recycle wrap with the fewest ‘touches’.

Ideally, a business would have containers located within easy reach of where the wrap is removed, a plastic baler (or a number of balers for volumes of wrap or for different waste streams) & would be able to eject the plastic onto a pallet & move it straight onto a standing trailer to save the most time. Not all businesses can do this, however, and so it is worth considering how many of these elements can be undertaken.

The minimum requirement is the purchase or rental of a baler which should pay for itself many times over in the extra recycling revenues generated. For more information, please read our article called Why Do I Need a Baler?

In order to make the economics of a standing trailer work, businesses need to be recycling at least an articulated lorry load of plastic & cardboard per week (as there is a cost to letting a trailer stand idle in a yard) and, if this is not the case, businesses can store their bales & have them collected at times to suit them, the disadvantage of this being that bales have to be moved from storage onto the trailer when it is time to have them taken away and this means an extra ‘touch’ of the material.

How Retailers Can Get the Best Value from Pallet Wrap

If you are a retailer, then the pallet wrap that comes to you may be subject to the choices of people further up the supply chain. In this instance, you an ask your suppliers to keep tape & labels off of the wrap that comes to you & to not use tinted file,

How Warehouses Can Get the Best Value from Pallet Wrap

If you run a warehouse or distribution centre, logistics matter. In this instance, you might like to consider:

• Removing pallet wrap from incoming goods where they are received & having containers at the area for incoming goods
• If the above isn’t possible, it is important to have containers for pallet wrap located close to the palletised goods to make it easy to scrap the pallet wrap once it is removed
• Clearly label the containers being for pallet wrap only to minimise contamination
• Consider using different containers for clear pallet wrap & coloured pallet wrap to ensure you get the best price for clear film
• Do not store pallet wrap on the floor as it is tacky & can pick up contamination

The Cost of Recycling Pallet Wrap

The costs of recycling pallet wrap are:

• Staff training – training is usually offered free of charge by recycling companies installing balers but you will have your own procedures for the collection & segregation of the materials that you will need to get staff on board with in order to get the best return. If you want any advice on this, please give us a call on the number at the top of the page
• Containers – pallet wrap will need to be stored in containers. In many cases, the balers themselves can be used as containers as material can be dropped into an open baler before it is compressed but, in larger warehouses, this becomes impractical and, if companies don’t want to have multiple or multiple chamber balers, then containers are necessary at least to deal with the segregation of clear & coloured wrap
• Baling Wire – in order to tie the pallets safely, it is important to use baling wire. This is relatively inexpensive
• Labour – there is labour required to collect & recycle materials. Most balers have relatively quick cycle times & recycling operations do not need to take a long time but they do take time

The Value of Recycling Pallet Wrap

Besides the environmental benefit of recycling pallet wrap, there is huge economic value. We will focus on this because it is the biggest incentive for businesses to get cracking.

The value in recycling comes from:

• Saved landfill costs – if pallet wrap is being landfilled, this is a real waste of money as there are people who are prepared to pay you to take it away
• Rebates – clear, high-grade pallet wrap can command hundreds of pounds per tonne, coloured or jazz waste may command around one third of this value
• Better value from other recycling initiatives – if businesses are already recycling card & paper, to include pallet wrap usually gives better value for money in terms of staff time & in terms of transportation costs as it is easy to recycle these materials together, multi-chamber balers can make it easy to recycle multiple waste streams, and recycling companies can transport higher volumes