We have lived among and nurtured a natural resource available to us from the very beginning. 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 the warmth of our surroundings.

Today, wood’s responsibilities 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. It does so every day, millions of times a day. Wood pallets and wood packaging truly do move the world, and it’s done sustainably.

There is no other commonly-used building material that requires so little energy to produce as wood. Thanks to photosynthesis, trees are able to use an abundant natural resource (i.e. the sun) as it captures CO2 in the air, combine it with water these plants get from the soil to produce an amazing organic material, wood.

Wood pallets and packaging are naturally almost completely made out of wood. And wood’s strong environmental credentials have been captured in various Life-Cycle Assessment studies and Environmental Product Declarations.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL PRODUCT DECLARATION (EPD) FOR U.S. WOODEN PALLETS.

EPDs provide consumers with transparent and product-specific environmental information through independent certification.

When considering its life cycle, wooden pallets can have a potential net carbon positive impact. Through the unique properties of wood, carbon offsets may be achieved by the reuse of pallet materials and substituting wood fuel from pallet waste (e.g., unusable pallets) for natural gas.

The first of its kind in the distribution packaging space, this EPD includes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results for all stages of wooden pallets from cradle to grave, including production, use, and end-of-life stages.

REPORT LINKS

• EPD Transparency Summary (UL)
• EPD Full Report (UL)
• LCA Report (US Forest Service, Forest Products Lab)
• Product Category Rule Guidance for Wooden Pallets
• Press Release (PR Newswire, 11/30/2020)

UL has certified the “Industry-Average Wooden Pallet EPD” with the recognized date of July 1, 2020. This certification signifies that the EPD is now in conformance with the stringent type III environmental declarations set by UL and the International Standards Organization.