Many of us use wooden pallets in both our personal and professional lives. They are a tried and tested method for storing items in such a way that they can be easily secured and transported. Anyone who has worked in a retail position that required they took receipt of deliveries of new stock will no doubt be familiar with the humble wooden pallet and just how versatile it can be as a piece of equipment.
Anyone with experience with wooden pallets will know that they are much more than meets the eye. As simple as a wooden pallet might seem, it actually does more than just hold cargo for you. If you’ve ever used a wooden pallet that was damaged, broken or otherwise unsuitable for the job you needed it for, you will know first-hand exactly what a difference having the right pallet will make to the ease of your job.
At best, an unsuitable pallet will make your job more difficult than it needs to be. In some cases, however, an incorrect pallet can represent a serious hazard to worker safety. If pallets that are fully loaded and contain heavy or precious cargo, a structural failure can be devastating to both people and stock.
The biggest mistake that you can make with your wooden pallets is assuming that one wooden pallet is as good as the next. While they are simple as far as warehouse equipment goes, they are more than just lumps of wood and need to be given care and thought.
If yours is a business that cares about their eco-credentials and wants to do their bit to operate a more environmentally friendly business, wooden pallets represent a golden opportunity to demonstrate how much you value sustainable business practices.
Why Should You Go Green?
With the Extinction Rebellion protests making headlines around the world, environmental issues are very much in the public consciousness right now. Not only is there a growing moral imperative to address the climate crisis, there is a green dollar emerging that businesses can no longer afford to ignore – quite literally.
In today’s business environment, the climate issue is a guaranteed vote winner. There is an increasing number of people who would rather pay a bit more money in order to support businesses that take environmental issues seriously.
Even a casual observer can’t help but notice the trend of businesses putting their environmental record front and center in their marketing campaigns. For businesses who are actively involved in environmental campaigning, or who have fought to make their production process more eco-friendly, marketing enables them to inform consumers of their efforts. This is especially important for businesses that are traditionally viewed as being environmentally harmful.
Consider a business like Pepsi. Their plastic bottles are associated with waste. However, the company is involved in a number of campaigns to minimize their environmental impact. Because their green efforts are much less visible, they inform their customers about it through marketing.
GreenBlock
We sell the GreenBlock wooden pallet because we understand that going green isn’t just good business – it is the right thing to do. When most people buy a wooden pallet, they give little thought to where the wood used to build it is sourced. When the consumers that buy a product aren’t asking those kinds of questions, businesses feel emboldened to act in their own interests.
However, this is slowly changing. As we mentioned above, the Extinction Rebellion protest, along with a growing generational gap in attitudes towards the environment, is transforming societal attitudes. As the social climate on climate change alters, businesses will increasingly be forced to pick a side.
By using an ecologically-friendly solution like the GreenBlock and turning your back on wooden pallets that are made from irresponsibly sourced materials, you aren’t just doing your bit for a worthy cause. You will also be doing yourself an enormous favor as a businessperson – you can use your green credentials to increase your profits.
Selling Green
Of course, no one is going to give you money just for going green – although you should see what tax relief is available to green businesses in your state. However, if you were to introduce the GreenBlock into your warehouses, as an example, you could then create a marketing campaign around the fact that yours is a business that goes the extra mile in order to save the planet.
If you really want to trade on your ecological efforts then you will need to dive into it with both feet. Don’t just take a few token measures and leave it at that – millennials are smart and they will see right through you. The only thing worse than being a polluting business would be to be perceived as a polluting business that lies to consumers.
Although the power of this green dollar is becoming clearer by the day, there are still a number of businesses that have been slow to pick up on it. Using sustainable wooden pallets in your warehouses and throughout your business before your competitors could give you a serious advantage.
While it seems like a small thing, and in the grand scheme of things it is, anything that you can point to as evidence that you are greener than the competition is a valuable tool, your marketing department will thank you for giving them something to work with.
Finding the Right Pallet
We’ve already mentioned our own GreenBlock as an eco-friendly alternative. However, if the GreenBlock isn’t available to you, perhaps consider pallet brokers. These pallet brokers, as the name suggests, will help you to find pallets.
As pallet brokers are responsible for arranging the buying and selling of pallets, they are intimately familiar with the stock from a wide variety of distributors. They can point you towards the pallet suppliers who operate according to solid green principles.
If you’ve never used pallet brokers before, you should ask around other businesses to see if they can recommend any. Remember, you aren’t just looking to score the cheapest deal that you can. Lots of people use pallet brokers in order to sniff out these super-cheap deals. However, if you are prepared to spend a little more on your pallets, you can recoup that money later on when you launch your new green-focused marketing campaign.
Deciding which wooden pallets to use in your business might seem like an insignificant decision. However, as with most things in business, it provides an opportunity to those that are able to capitalize on the situation. If you aren’t yet chasing after the green dollar, this is a great place to begin. The millennial market is showing signs of hardening their attitude towards environmental issues – they will not accept businesses continuing to disregard the environment.
Looking to the future, it seems that eco-issues will only become a more prominent fixture on the global agenda. The time to jump aboard the green train is now. Don’t let your competitors swoop in and beat you to the punch. Instead, start with something simple, like the wooden pallets that you use in your business. Once you start looking for ways to go green, you’ll be amazed by how many you think of.