Company turns coconut waste into biodegradable pallets just as strong as wood!
A Dutch company has come up with a brilliant solution to the deforestation and pollution caused by wooden shipping pallets – pallets made out of coconut waste.
Humans chop down nearly 200 million trees per year to make
nearly 2 billion single-use wooden pallets.
These pallets are treated with toxic chemicals so they can hold more weight and often used only once before they end up in a landfill or burned.
They are also shipped across the world from soft-wood plantations in Canada before they are shipped back across the world from Asia, where many of the goods they carry are manufactured.
Coconut husks solve this problem and many more.
First, coconuts grow in Asia, where much of the merchandise European and Americans buy comes from. So they only need to be shipped across the ocean once.
Second, coconut husks are a waste product, which would otherwise end up in a landfill or burned.
Third, they are non-toxic, biodegradable, and are great for improving the soil they are composted into.
Fourth, they create extra income for impoverished coconut farmers.
Fifth, they are lighter weight and more compact, but just as strong. This greatly reduces shipping costs/pollution, the company claims.
Coco Pallet’s first factory in the Phillipines is producing 5 million Cocopallets per year. The company claims each factory they build will save half a million trees per year.