The 6% we cannot recover

Roughly 94% of the mass that comes through our gate leaves as a working container or as recovered material. The remaining 6% does not, and it breaks down into four categories that behave completely differently.

Residue is a seller-side problem

Heels are normal and we are set up for them: evacuated under containment at intake and routed to compliant treatment. The volume is what varies, and it varies enormously between sellers.

A yard that drains containers before storing them sends us containers with a few ounces in them. A yard that stores containers outdoors with the caps off sends us containers with several gallons of rain and unknown residue. The second case is heavier, more expensive to handle and cannot go anywhere except treatment.

The single most effective thing a seller can do about this is put the caps back on.

Contamination arrives with the load

Pallets, banding, shrink wrap, general site waste and the occasional entirely unrelated object. On a clearance this is understandable — a decommissioning crew is clearing a building, not curating a load.

We sort it and route what we can, but material that arrives mixed and contaminated is worth less and sometimes worth nothing. This is the category most improvable by a conversation before the truck arrives.

Composite fractions are an engineering problem

Some decking laminates plastic to steel or wood in ways that cannot be separated at a cost that makes sense. Some fittings combine polymers and metals in single mouldings. Some labels bond to HDPE strongly enough that the flake carries them through the wash.

This is the honest part of the remainder — the part that is not anybody's fault and that we cannot currently fix. Better separation equipment would move some of it. We have not bought it, because the same capital in the cage shop moves a larger number.

What we have tried

• Asking sellers to cap containers before storage. This works and it is free, and it is now in our standard collection brief.
• Sorting contamination at the seller's site rather than ours, which our crews do on clearances. It reduces the category by about a third.
• Testing label removal chemistry. Some works, none of it works cheaply enough at our volumes.
• Separating bonded decking mechanically. The energy cost exceeded the material value.

The other thing we do not do

We do not buy carbon offsets to close the gap. The value of this business is emissions that were never produced because containers did not need to be manufactured, and that is a real reduction rather than a purchased one. Buying credits to make the remainder disappear on paper would confuse the two.

Six percent is where we are. It has moved by about a point and a half in three years, all of it from better handling at source rather than from anything clever at our end.

How the remainder has moved

A point and a half in three years, and essentially all of it from handling changes at source rather than from anything technical at our end. That is not a flattering finding but it is a useful one: the remainder is mostly created before a container reaches us.

What would actually move it further

• Universal capping. If every container arrived capped, the rain-plus-unknown category would essentially disappear, and it is the largest single contributor.
• Prior-contents records as standard from every seller. Undocumented stock cannot be reused and its mass lands disproportionately in reclaim and treatment.
• Design changes upstream. Bonded composite decking is unrecoverable by construction; a mechanically fastened equivalent would not be.
• Label adhesives that release in a wash. This is a small category and an irritating one.

Three of those four are decisions made by somebody other than us, which is the honest reason the number has moved slowly.

What we mean by unrecoverable

Not landfilled indiscriminately. Residue goes to licensed treatment. Contamination is sorted and routed to whatever stream will take it. What the category actually means is material that does not return to productive use as either a container or a recovered feedstock.

It is a stricter definition than most diversion figures use, which is part of why our headline number is 94% rather than something higher.

Why we do not buy offsets

The value of this business is emissions that were never produced, because containers did not need to be manufactured. That is a real reduction, measurable from component masses and production intensities.

Buying credits to make the remaining six percent disappear on paper would mix a genuine avoided emission with a purchased claim, and would make our own numbers harder for a customer to audit. We would rather publish six percent.

Questions about the remainder

Does any of it go to landfill? Some of the contamination fraction does, where no stream will take it. Residue goes to licensed treatment rather than landfill. What does not happen is a whole container being buried, which is the line we hold.

Would better technology fix it? Some of it. Better separation equipment would recover a portion of the bonded composite fraction. The capital would not go as far as the same money spent on repair capability, which is why it has not been bought.

Is six percent typical? We do not know, because very few operations publish theirs. That is part of why we do — a figure with no comparators is less useful than it should be, and somebody has to go first.

Will it get to zero? No. There is a fraction of any material stream that is genuinely unrecoverable with current methods, and claiming otherwise would be a marketing number rather than a measurement.