Pallet recycling and disposal in Portsmouth
Not every pallet that comes off a lorry is worth keeping. Broken bearers, split decks, soaked timber and odd sizes nobody uses all end up in the same corner of the yard, and that corner grows. This page is about getting rid of them properly.
Recycling is not the same as collection
Our collections service deals with surplus pallets that are still fit for work — pallets with value, which can go back into circulation. Recycling and disposal is the other half of the problem: the pallets that are finished, the ones that were never a standard size, and the ones that have been outside so long the timber has gone.
Most sites generate both at once, which is why it is worth describing the whole stack when you ring rather than only the good half. We would rather sort it once than turn up, take the usable pallets and leave you with the problem you actually wanted solving.
What happens to a pallet at the end of its life
The first question is always whether it can be repaired. A pallet with one cracked board and an otherwise sound frame is worth fixing; a pallet with a snapped bearer, a racked frame or rot through the blocks is not.
What cannot be repaired is broken down. Usable boards and blocks are salvaged where it is worth doing, and the remaining timber goes for recycling — chipped for board manufacture, animal bedding, landscaping or biomass, depending on its condition. The point is that it leaves the yard as material rather than as waste.
Why it is worth doing properly
A stack of dead pallets is not just untidy. It takes up space that costs you money, it is a fire load against a building, it holds water and attracts vermin, and in a yard with vehicle movements it is something for a forklift to knock over.
There is also the obvious environmental point: timber that is recycled does not become landfill, and timber that is repaired does not need replacing with new. Most of the pallets we handle have more than one working life in them if somebody bothers to look.
Arranging a clearance
Tell us roughly how many pallets you have, the spread of sizes, what condition they are in and how they are stacked, along with your postcode and what access is like for a vehicle. A photograph taken on a phone is genuinely useful here and saves a lot of description.
We will then tell you honestly what is reusable, what is recycling, and whether the job is one we can do. If it is not, we will say that too.