Somebody asked us at a trade event last autumn what the hardest part of running a reuse yard is. It is not the wash line, the weather or the margins. It is telling people no, repeatedly, to their faces, about containers they need to get rid of.
We declined 11% of offered loads last year. Here is the breakdown, because the composition is more interesting than the number.
The categories
| Reason | Share | What we did instead |
|---|---|---|
| Residue outside permitted list | 46% | Referred to a licensed specialist processor |
| Undeclared contents found at the gate | 24% | Refused the affected units, took the rest |
| Below minimum for a movement | 18% | Offered a corridor date or will-call |
| Pure scrap load, no saleable units | 12% | Quoted a processing charge; half accepted |
1. Outside the permitted list
Pesticides and biocides, oxidisers and peroxides, aromatic and chlorinated solvents, pharmaceutical actives, anything needing specialist rinsate treatment. These are not judgement calls; they are a written list and the answer is the same every time.
What we do not do is accept them and subcontract, which is the manoeuvre this industry is known for. If the rinsate from a container needs handling we are not permitted for, that is true whether the container is in our yard or somebody else's, and passing it along with a margin attached does not make it somebody else's problem, it makes it a hidden one.
So we send the SDS back with the name of a processor who is permitted for it, at no charge. It costs us a load and it costs nothing else.
2. Undeclared contents — the awkward category
Twenty-four percent, and this is where the conversations get difficult, because it usually means a discrepancy between what a form said and what is visibly in a container on our intake bay.
It is rarely deliberate. Most often, a facility has a list of what it purchased and no list of what got repurposed internally — a container that held a food-grade oil, then held a parts washer solvent for six months, then got emptied and offered to us as a food-grade tote. In good faith, by someone who read the purchase record.
3. Too small to move
The least interesting category and the easiest to solve. Four to six units on a corridor we already run is fine. Four units in central New Jersey on a week we are not going is a dedicated truck movement for maybe $150 of containers.
We keep a waiting list by corridor and call people when a route firms up. About 70% of the loads we initially decline for size end up collected within six weeks.
4. Pure scrap
A load of containers with nothing saleable in it is a processing cost with no offsetting revenue. We quote a per-unit charge — always well below a landfill tipping fee — and about half of sellers accept it.
The other half take them to a landfill, which is the outcome this entire company exists to prevent, and we have not found a way to fix that within the constraints of being a business. It is the part of this job that sits worst.
Why refusing matters to buyers
Because a yard that accepts everything has to sell everything, and the only way to sell a container with an unknown or unsuitable history is to describe it vaguely. Every vague listing you have ever seen started as a load somebody should have refused.
The grading standard is only as good as the intake standard. You cannot grade honestly at station two if you accepted dishonestly at station one.— Renée Haddad, intake and grading
So the 11% is not a cost of doing business carefully. It is the thing that makes the other 89% mean something.