Clean Energy’s Dirty Secret
Each year, residents of Ålesund, Norway, celebrate Midsummer’s eve with a bonfire.
It is not your average fire.
In 2016, it broke the World Record. Towering more than 155 feet over the rocky coast, stretching 65 feet wide at its base, and livestreamed over Facebook, the world’s tallest “man-built bonfire” was made with “all muscles, no machines” to honor an ancient Viking tradition. The fire took three months to build, burned for two days,[1] and was kindled by a vertigo-inducing stack of wooden shipping pallets.
Yes. That’s right.
The fire that earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records was built entirely of wood pallets.
In the usual circumstances, many of those pallets would have met a similar fate. Millions of tons of wood waste are either burned, ground in wood chippers, or thrown into landfills each year[2]. Ironically, however, a significant amount of that wood waste comes from the pallets that the solar industry has thrown out, often after a single use. In fact, the extremely short life span of a wood pallet used in solar panel shipping contributes to a problem of Midsummer bonfire proportions: use one once, a handful of times at best, and it has to be replaced.
We’ll give you the rundown by numbers. Almost 10 percent of all waste in America is wood waste.[3] The EPA estimates that wood pallet waste accounts for a whopping 90 percent of total wood packaging waste—and while about 17 percent of those pallets are recycled and a little over 8 percent are burned, most of them end up in landfills after only a handful of uses.[4]
Here’s where it gets personal for us. On average, the American solar industry alone produces 60 million pounds of wood pallet waste each year.[5]
There’s another way to visualize the wood pallet waste problem. That tower we mentioned? Our friends in Norway could build it 31 times out of last year’s domestic solar industry wood pallet waste alone. Stacked one on top of the other, those 31 towers would be as tall as four Empire State Buildings. Even the tallest building in the world—the Burj Khalifa in Dubai—would have to be stacked 1.5 times to eclipse the height of 31 wood pallet waste towers. And that’s only counting waste from the US solar industry. The staggering 600 million pounds of wood pallet waste from the global solar industry could build 310 Midsummer pallet towers—the equivalent of 40 Empire State Buildings or 15 Burj Khalifas.
The 60 million pounds of wood pallet waste from the American solar industry alone could build 31 Midsummer pallet towers, 4 Empire State Buildings or 1.5 Burj Khalifas. For global numbers, it’s x10.
The solar industry is projected to increase 20.5% in the next five years,[6] meaning that its wood pallet waste will too. And when that waste winds up in a landfill, it stays there. Landfill conditions are generally not conducive to wood decomposition, which means that pallets relegated to overstuffed US dump sites sit there for around thirteen years, compounding the size and scope of the problem.[7]
Why aren’t more pallets recycled? The answer boils down to nails, toxic chemicals, and cheap wood. Chipping to use as mulch or bedding material is the most common way to recycle wood pallets.[8] To prevent damage to the chipping machinery, the nails must be removed from the pallets before processing. And while some wood chippers can chip pallets with nails, the chemicals used on the pallets gum up the machine. In the end, the materials used for wood pallets simply aren't recommended to be used for mulch. It's just too toxic. And because cheap wood is being used to make the pallets, they aren't wanted for reuse—ergo, most wooden pallets wind up being simply thrown away.
Sadly, the solar shipping industry creates a problem that’s bigger than landfills.
Forests provide habitat and food for a staggering 70 percent of the world’s plant and animal life,[9] but trees harvested for wood pallet lumber directly impact these ecosystems. Although sustainability efforts are growing, more than 80 percent of the natural forests on Earth have already been destroyed—resulting in loss of habitat and species extinction.[10]
Deforestation also directly impacts human life. As we increasingly depend on cars, trucks, and jets to ferry us and our necessities around the globe, trees improve our air quality by absorbing and sequestering a large portion of our ever-expanding carbon footprint. In the US, forests remove over 1.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide annually—each tree, on average, removing 25kg of carbon from the air every year and supplying enough oxygen for four people and compensating for more than 10 percent of US emissions in the process.[11]
But not only do wood pallets used by the solar industry contribute to deforestation—after all, it takes almost 200,000 trees to produce the 1.5 million pallets used for solar PV models each year—timber production itself has a major impact on the environment. Energy is consumed. Destructive greenhouse gases are emitted during the many stages of production and transportation of timber products.[12] To be made into useable pallets, raw lumber is treated with heat or chemicals—usually methyl bromide, which is toxic to humans and believed by scientists to break down the Earth’s ozone layer.[13] Additionally, deforestation in the US is responsible for releasing 17% of greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere.[14]
To be made into useable pallets, raw lumber is treated with heat or chemicals—usually methyl bromide, which is toxic to humans and believed by scientists to break down the Earth’s ozone layer.
In other words, the solar industry’s wood pallet use, production, and eventual waste actively reduces the number of trees available to filter our atmosphere and simultaneously pollutes that atmosphere in the process.
Seems like our industry has a problem.
Thankfully, awareness is growing. Sustainability practices are increasing. At PVpallet, we want to do our part. That’s why we’re passionate about creating reusable, recyclable pallets to reduce wood waste and minimize shortages, landfills, and other harmful environmental impacts.
We invite you to consider helping us make a positive change.
[4] Based on figures from 2018 (epa.gov).
[5] Based on figures 19.2 GW of solar installed in the US in 2020.
[7] “The Impact of Wood Pallet Waste on Earth’s Landfills” (plasticpalletpros.com).
[8] “The Impact of Wood Pallet Waste on Earth’s Landfills” (plasticpalletpros.com).
[10] According to the World Resources Institute (oxygenglobal.net).
[12] “Minimizing environmental impacts of timber products through the production process ‘From Sawmill to Final Products,’ Environmental Systems Research 7, Article 6, 2018.
[13] “The Impact of Wood Pallet Waste on Earth’s Landfills” (plasticpalletpros.com).
[14] “Minimizing environmental impacts of timber products through the production process ‘From Sawmill to Final Products,’ Environmental Systems Research 7, Article 6, 2018.