CHEP touts third-party environmental study

The wooden pallet pooling company CHEP has released a third-party study that says that its pallet pooling system "creates significantly less solid waste, requires less total energy, and reduces more greenhouse gas emissions than other common shipping platform solutions, including pooled plastic pallets and limited use wood pallets."

The report was written by Franklin Associates, a consultancy specializing in life cycle inventory analysis and solid waste management. Until recently, CHEP's lifecycle analysis only compared the pooled pallet system to one-way or limited used wood pallets that were not in a pool (where pallets are returned to a depot and reused by other companies in the pool). Now the study also looks at plastic pallets. In tandem with the new report, CHEP has launched a new microsite, www.chep.com/knowthefacts.

CHEP competitor, iGPS, a plastic pallet pooler, similarly has its own lifecycle analysis report that claims that pooled plastic pallets are more environmentally responsible. iGPS's report was written by Environmental Resources Management, a provider of environmental, health and safety, risk, and social consulting services.