Bulletin 005 ยท recycling
Plastic pallets are recycled in five steps: collect, sort by resin and colour, clean, grind into regrind, then melt and mould again. The pallet in your yard is feedstock for the next one.
Racklify describes the same chain: collected, sorted by bale grade, cleaned, shredded or granulated, then extruded or injection moulded.
Five questions and a photo. We say what we think happens next once the pallets have been seen.
A load is described and, where it makes sense, photographed. The count matters because it sizes the trailer. A stack of nestable pallets is dense. A stack of rackable ones is not.
Every pallet is checked for owner marks before it is counted as feedstock.
HDPE and PP go to separate piles. Within each, colour comes next, because the colour of the regrind sets what it can be moulded into. Black hides everything. A single other colour is a smaller, cleaner stream.
Metal, labels, tags, stones and food residue come off. Burnt or melted sections are cut out. The Racklify description puts contaminant removal before cleaning and drying, and so do we.
Large pieces are shredded, then granulated through a perforated screen. The holes set the size of the flake. Regrind is what comes out, and the Cary Company defines it as scrap chopped and ground into pellets or flake for another run.
Regrind is melted and formed again. Injection moulding is the usual way a pallet or a pallet part is made. Some recycled-content pallets blend regrind with virgin resin, so ask for documentation of the content.
Most failures happen before the machines. Mixed resins, heavy contamination and an unknown owner stop a load faster than a worn knife. Each stage above is a place to catch the problem while it is cheap.
A single resin, one colour or a known blend, little residue, no metal and no foreign plastic. A pallet that came from a clean warehouse in a single colour is easier to place than one from a mixed dock.
| Step | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Collect | Mixed pallets in a yard | A counted, checked load |
| Sort | The load | HDPE and PP piles, by colour |
| Clean | Sorted piles | Feedstock without contaminants |
| Grind | Feedstock | Regrind flake |
| Mould | Regrind, sometimes with virgin resin | A pallet or a part |
A perforated plate that sets the flake size. Material stays in the cutting chamber until it is small enough to fall through the holes.
Regrind is flake straight from the grinder. Pellets are made by melting and cutting it again. Both are called recycled resin.
Generally not. The Cary Company says its own regrind is not FDA compliant even though HDPE is an FDA-compliant plastic.
We state no timing. It depends on the processor, the volume and the route.
Grinding changes its shape, not its chemistry. Each melting does age the polymer a little, which is one reason blends are specified.
Sources, reviewed Nov 12, 2026: Racklify encyclopedia, recycled plastic pallets; The Cary Company, what is regrind; Wikipedia, resin identification code.