What do Clean Coal, Environmental Plastic Pallets and
the Loch Ness Monster Have in Common?

Answer:  Interesting Theories and Little Supporting Evidence.

Recently a manufacturer of pallets threw down the green gauntlet on their plastic pallets.  Their claim is plastic pallets are environmental champions. Unfortunately, those claims, like the plastic pallets themselves, prove to be unsustainable -- especially when 4% of the world's oil production is used to make plastic products. 

Like the term "clean coal," environmental plastic is actually an oxymoron disguised as a scientific fact. Anyone who's been around plastic knows, seen and has smelled the heavy environmental footprint inherent in the manufacture of plastic with their dirty smokestacks belching fumes into our atmosphere. Like a green business owner once said to me, “If it stinks, it stinks.”

Plastic does make environmental contributions. Unfortunately they are all negative ones. The extraction, processing and transportation of the raw materials needed for plastic production requires vast amounts of coal, petroleum and natural gas and their manufacturing processes fill our atmosphere with CO2 and toxins. 

Is it any wonder that everything plastic, from water bottles to baby bottles, from plastic grocery bags to plastic showerheads, are under such scrutiny and attack from scientists and environmental groups for their negative impact in our already overcrowded landfills? For fouling our oceans and streams? For their possible harm to our health and the health of planet earth?

Consider these facts:

• Plastic accounts for 10% of all generated waste.
• Plastic manufacturing pollutes our water and air, contributing to acid rain and smog.
• A plastic waste island larger than Texas is now floating in the Pacific.
• Even though plastic is recyclable, little of it ever is.
• More than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris.
• The flame retardant used in plastic pallets, Decabromide, is under investigation by the FDA and is banned in Oregon.

And just recently, the city of San Francisco outlawed plastic shopping bags. So why are we putting more plastic anything on the market?

Wooden pallets, on the other hand, are completely natural and come from sustainable sources.  Responsible manufacturers of wooden pallets use the waste trim from the lumbering process, the part that gets cut off when logs are squared for lumber manufacturing to make their pallets. That trim would otherwise end up in landfills, so the net effect of wooden pallet manufacturing is positive, using waste instead of creating it.

Wooden pallets make use of every 'R" in the recycling process. They are reclaimed, recycled, repaired and reused. When their useful lifecycle is over, they are then ground up into garden mulch or stove pellets so they are green from beginning to end.  

Plastic is exactly the opposite. It start out dirty, stays dirty and usually ends up harming landfills, wildlife, our air and our oceans.

In marketing, copywriters often use what are called "weasel words" to try and make a claim.  They are words that sound like they mean something but actually don't.  Claims like "nothing is stronger than" or "nothing works faster than ” sound important but actually mean that they are no better, no stronger, no faster  than their competition. They just sound like they are.

Our planet and our environment are too important a subject to be subjected to fiction and spin instead of facts. Some day there may be clean coal or environmentally-friendly plastic made from sources other than oil and petrochemicals, but for now and the foreseeable future, wooden pallets are far greener, far more sustainable, and far more environmentally friendly than plastic pallets. Period.

These are facts, not unsubstantiated claims trying to weasel their way as the truth. 

Michael Smith is the C.O.O. of PALNET, a national, environmentally-friendly pallet manufacturer. He can be reached at 877-PALNET-1.