WOOD PACKAGING – ESSENTIAL AND SUSTAINABLE.
Advance Supports Healthy Markets, Healthy Forests, and Healthy Communities.
Our very understanding of the world as we know it has been touched by forests, wood and wood products. Our homes, flooring, furniture and fuel, provide us with the warmth of our surroundings and a connection to a natural resource that has been with us since the very beginning.
Today, wood’s responsibility in the supply chain is to serve as a fundamental and sustainable part of moving goods from one point to another safely, quickly, and efficiently. Wood pallets and wood packaging truly do move the world millions of times each day, and it’s done sustainably. Wood pallets remain the most environmentally responsible choice in modern shipping. There is no other commonly used building material that requires so little energy to produce as wood. Thanks to sunlight and photosynthesis, trees absorb CO₂ from the air and combine it with water from the soil to create an exceptional organic material: wood.
That captured carbon remains stored in every pallet we build, giving wood a proven environmental advantage over plastic or composite alternatives and anchoring it as a low-impact, renewable resource.
Independent Life-Cycle Assessments and Environmental Product Declarations consistently show that wood pallets have strong, scientifically verified sustainability benefits. Each cubic meter of wood used in products like pallets stores nearly a ton of CO₂, and substituting wood for other materials prevents another ton of emissions.
North American forests are also growing faster than they are harvested, with billions of new trees planted each year to ensure long-term forest health and supply.
Choosing wooden pallets supports a renewable resource, reduces carbon impact, and keeps your supply chain aligned with responsible, nature-based materials. Remember wood as nature’s packaging.
Wood pallets are highly recyclable, and North America has one of the most efficient wood-recovery systems in the world. Recycling happens throughout the entire pallet life cycle. Many pallets are reused immediately if they remain in good condition, while damaged units are repaired, rebuilt, or dismantled so their lumber can be used to manufacture new pallets. Nothing goes to waste. When a pallet reaches the end of its usable life, it can be ground into fiber for products such as landscape mulch, animal bedding, soil enhancers, particle board, or clean bioenergy applications.
This circular model allows wooden pallets to complete multiple trips before they are finally processed, dramatically reducing waste and conserving wood fiber. In Canada Advance Pallet and Lumber is proud to be one of more than 100 companies whose primary or secondary business is pallet material recycling, forming a nationwide network that recovers and repurposes millions of wood-packaging units each year.
The system is so effective that a federal report described wood packaging as “an insignificant waste issue” thanks to widespread reuse and recycling efforts.
In the United States, the recycling rate is equally impressive. Research from Virginia Tech and the USDA Forest Service shows that in 2016, 341 million pallets were recovered and only about 25 million were landfilled—a recycling rate of 95%. Wood pallets make up only a tiny fraction of material entering municipal or construction landfills, largely due to rising environmental awareness and zero-landfill company policies. With a nationwide recycler network that far exceeds the required coverage for a product to be considered “recyclable,” wood pallets continue to lead as one of the most sustainable packaging solutions available.