Rustem, our reader asked a question: instead of a wooden pallet, should we make corrugated cardboard from wood? Where is the ecology here?
Let’s talk about the ecological factor of corrugated pallets.
(Konstantin Shabunevich, CORRUGA.EXPERT) – Please clarify, a reversible wooden pallet weighing 22 kg, consisting of 100% primary fiber wood. In practice, it is assumed that it is used about 6 times, and the cardboard one once?
(Rustem Karimov, CEO of Karimov GmbH) – A wooden pallet can be used 4 or 5 times. It depends on the regulated standards. But wooden pallets are 100% made of primary raw material.
As for the cardboard pallet, it is mostly made of secondary raw material. We recommend using only the top layer of cellulose.
A corrugated cardboard pallet in pure form weighs from 3 to 5 kilograms. Let’s take the average value: 4 kilograms, assuming that the top layer is cellulose. Thus, in a corrugated pallet there will be about 0.6 kg of primary fiber, and in a wooden one 3.7.
And a disposable wooden pallet “eats” 15 kilograms of primary fiber at a time.
Rustem, thank you for the explanation. Let’s discuss the second illustration. We see that the disposable pallet weighs 30 kg. Is this the weight of the pallet including its delivery and return?
Yes, the wooden pallet is made at the factory. Then it needs to be delivered to the desired manufacturer, for example, a cookie producer. After that, the manufacturers load their goods, and then the cookies go to the supermarket. Here the life cycle of the disposable wooden pallet is closed.
Do you need to dispose of this pallet later?
In particular, when composing the above scheme, we did not take into account the need for full disposal or recovery of the wooden pallet, which requires effort. We reasoned from the point of view of logistics, that is, movement and weight.
The ixs-pal® technology allows you to assemble a corrugated pallet right at “our” cookie manufacturer. The only thing you need to do is deliver the blanks to the palletizer – a machine for assembling the pallet. Then the finished pallet waits for loading its favorite cookies and sending them to the store.
Taking into account the delivery of blanks and the movement of goods on the ixs-pal® pallet, which weighs an average of four kilograms, we get 6.6 kilograms. This is the weight that is involved in using the ixs-pal® pallet throughout the cycle.
When using wooden pallets, this indicator is 30 kilograms for one-time use and 44 for a reversible pallet. We emphasize that additional money is required to transport each kilogram. In any case, the costs, exhaust gases of the car, all this negatively affects the ecology. That is, every kilogram of movement affects the economy and industry.
There is another important point to talk about, which is disposal. How does this process work and what is the impact on the environment?
In figure n.1 we indicated with the first sentence that the ixs-pal® pallet can be 100% recycled after use. From the perspective of a sustainable economy, which implies that the production of goods does not destroy the water balance and the external environment, but rather creates and contributes to the development of the external environment.
I will not repeat the basic principles of sustainable development now, but in general no one needs to prove that corrugated cardboard as a material is one of the components in the economy of sustainable development, because it is recycled and has a cyclical nature. Unlike wooden material, which grows, is cut down, processed into the desired product, the product serves for some time, and then worn-out products need to be disposed of.
Disposal methods usually lead to the destruction of the product and nothing more. The recycling of wood can possibly be turned into sawdust, for example, and then into fertilizers. But this recycling does not entail the next life cycle. You just need to plant a tree again, grow it, cut it down, process it and put it into circulation. And dispose of it. This is a long process. It takes 20-35 years to grow a tree.
The introduction of the pallet system ixs-pal® at the enterprise saves per year (when installing one palletizer ixs-pal®):
• up to 13,000 tons of wood (about 8,000 trees / 25,000 m³);
• reduces the weight of the transported cargo by up to 21,000 tons;
• reduces CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
This is a very long cycle, and there is no guarantee that the tree will grow. Our climate is changing so fast that regions where forests used to grow are now sharply stopping the growth of forests. For example, they are affected by drought or other climate changes. I want to say that the cycle associated with wood is very long compared to the cycle of cardboard recycling.
We would not see such volumes of corrugated packaging production in the world if the process of its production was complex and long. We see that cardboard is increasingly displacing wood. Accordingly, this is a more natural way of development, a more natural material than wood. I do not urge to completely abandon wood. No, not at all. Wooden pallets will still be used for transportation.
It is necessary to treat wood more carefully. Use it not for pallets, but for the production of furniture or more expensive and long-lasting goods. And let the pallets be cardboard.
I have another thought in my head right now. The production of cardboard pallets is environmentally friendly by its nature. For this, a small production area and environmental technology are needed. On the other hand, the production of wooden pallets is the processing of wood, additional dust, large production areas, logistics of wood blanks. The remains of wood need to be used, disposed of or applied somewhere.
And if you remember that the wood still needs to be dried, withstand the temperature regime on special equipment, or just dry for a long time on some open areas, before the wood becomes business. These are large areas, additional premises, cargo movement, a large number of people involved in this production. And then there is also the delivery of wooden pallets to manufacturers of goods.
If you compare the sizes of production of wooden pallets and cardboard pallets, then, of course, the advantage of cardboard production is obvious in terms of compactness.
Our ixs-pal® technology allows you to produce corrugated pallets compactly. Our colleagues in the production of cardboard pallets work well. But they conceptually went along the path of expanding production. Large areas, separate factories with a large amount of equipment, moving already glued pallets from the place of storage to consumers. This is a factory way of manufacturing.
And the production of ixs-pal® is compact: 20-30 m2. Plus additional benefits: minimum staff – one or two people, depending on the shift, electricity, compressed air.
Rustem, thank you for your answers to the questions.
Thank you for the interview. I will wait for new questions and comments from your readers.