Here’s Why Your Community Needs Pallets
With billions and billions of wooden pallets making their way around the globe every day, it is inevitable that many leave the supply chain.
Whether they are worn out, the end link of their journey has no further use for them, or they are simply abandoned, pallets have a way of finding new purposes for their existence.
Communities often find new ways to utilize, repurpose, and upgrade the humble pallet so it serves a whole new and unexpected second act after its freight, haulage, and shipping days are behind it.
Around the world, many artisans, crafters, and woodworkers seize on pallets gleefully as providing the essential raw materials for their projects. Whole cottage industries exist in creating beautiful and rustic furniture for both indoor and outdoor environments with old pallet wood.
Whether carefully dismantled and sanded to provide textured and interesting boards for a woodworker’s projects, or utilized closer to their original form to create street art or functional storage spaces, communities love reusing pallets. They are ideal materials for gates, doors, fences, and even pathways.
Pallets are often seen in our parks and wilder spaces, where they are carefully stacked up and filled with all sorts of natural textures such as sticks, stones, grasses, and the like, and – voila – a luxury bug hotel has been built that will provide essential shelter and habitat for hundreds of species of insects and bugs.
They make ideal walls for impromptu composting pits, as air and minibeasts are able to circulate freely through the gaps in the pallets to turn waste plant matter into rich compost and soil.
Some non-profits love pallets to use as, well, pallets, as they create goods for sale to fund their missions in the communities they serve.
More elaborate community projects utilizing unwanted pallets include building whole communities – literally. Many homeless people will use them to provide instant flooring to ensure they have a dry base to sleep on, and around the world, whole villages have been built to house refugees using pallets as a cheap and convenient building material.
And if pallets really have nothing more to give, then many charities can use them for fundraising bonfires at community celebrations and events.
Finally, end-of-life pallets can be mulched and returned to nature, providing a water-holding material that suppresses weeds and helps nourish and maintain community gardens and parks.
