The number that reframes everything
Dry wood is approximately 50% carbon by mass. A 35-pound softwood pallet therefore holds on the order of 16 pounds of carbon, which corresponds to roughly 26 kg of carbon dioxide that was removed from the atmosphere while the tree grew.
That carbon stays locked in the wood as long as the wood exists in a form that is not burning or rotting anaerobically. A pallet in service is a carbon store with a job.
Why landfill is the worst ending
When wood decomposes without oxygen, as it does buried in a landfill, a substantial portion of its carbon leaves as methane rather than CO₂. Methane has a global warming potential roughly 28 times that of CO₂ over a century.
This is why landfill diversion is the highest-leverage action in pallet sustainability, ahead of carbon accounting debates about displacement. Keeping wood out of an anaerobic hole converts a bad ending into a neutral or good one.
The hierarchy, in order
Best: keep the pallet in service. Repair beats replacement every time, because the carbon stays stored and no new manufacturing occurs.
Second: convert the wood into a long-lived product. Shelving, cladding, furniture, raised beds. The carbon stays stored for decades.
Third: mulch and bedding. Carbon returns to the soil carbon cycle relatively quickly but aerobically, which avoids methane.
Fourth: biomass energy. The carbon is released as CO₂, but it displaces fossil fuel that would otherwise be burned, so the net effect is far better than landfill.
Last and never: landfill.
What we do not claim
We do not claim the standing tree as a credit. We do not claim carbon sequestration for pallets we sell. And we do not count the biogenic carbon in a pallet as an offset against our own operational emissions, because that accounting is contested and we would rather publish a smaller defensible number.
What we do claim is measured landfill diversion and modelled avoided manufacturing, with the method published and the assumptions listed. That is a narrower claim and it survives scrutiny.
How this shows up in a decision
Suppose you have 400 pallets at end of life. Option one: pay a hauler, they go to landfill, and roughly 10 tonnes of stored carbon eventually becomes methane. Option two: we collect them, two thirds go back into service after repair, and the rest become mulch, bedding and fuel.
Both options cost you about the same. One of them is a reportable sustainability outcome with a certificate attached. That asymmetry is the whole argument.