Bulletin 007 · recycling
A scrap plastic pallet load is sorted into bins before it is ground: HDPE, PP, by colour, with pool-marked pallets set apart. The sort decides what the regrind can be used for.
The word scrap covers everything from a few cracked pallets to a trailer of mixed colours.
Five questions and a photo. We say what we think happens next once the pallets have been seen.
Think of a sorting bay with painted signs. One bay for HDPE. One for PP. One for mixed or unknown. One for marked pallets that have to be checked first. A load is worked through them in order.
The sort-your-load step on the home page and in the form copies that idea.
After resin, colour. Black is the easy stream because it hides colour variation. Grey and blue are the next most common. A pile with a bit of everything makes a speckled regrind that fewer buyers want.
Stickers, strapping, paint, grease and food residue all make regrind worse. A load that was used with chemicals or oil needs to say so, because some of it will not be accepted at all.
Count, size, resin, colour, condition, marks, ZIP. Seven items. If you have four of them, send what you have.
A pallet counted as scrap by the warehouse may be sound enough to sell. Look for the ones with no cracks, clean decks and a common footprint before the pile is called scrap. Those go to the retired stock bay.
At minimum three: marked, unmarked reusable and unmarked scrap. Resin and colour then split the last one. If you cannot hold three bays, photograph the three kinds apart and describe them as separate lines.
| Bin | What goes in | Next |
|---|---|---|
| HDPE, black | Black or dark pallets coded 2 | Grind to single-colour regrind |
| HDPE, colour | Blue, grey, red and other colours | Grind, sorted by colour |
| PP | Stiff pallets coded 5, often rackable | Grind apart from HDPE |
| Mixed or unknown | Resin not clear | Read the part, then re-sort |
| Marked | Another owner’s name or RFID | Ownership check first |
Scrap is damaged. Retired is sound pallets taken out of service, often a whole footprint at once. They go through different routes.
Yes. Say so. We separate HDPE and PP before anything is ground.
Tick not sure and send a close-up of a runner or block.
Single colour is easiest to place. Black is common and tolerant but hides what is inside it.
Say so on the form. Moisture and dirt are contamination, and a load that has been outside for a season is described differently from one that was indoors.
Sources, reviewed Nov 12, 2026: Nelson Company, what material is used for plastic pallets; Wikipedia, resin identification code; Association of Plastic Recyclers.