Why we publish our diversion rate
Most packaging vendors don't publish a diversion percentage. We do. Here's the case for the number, and why we'd rather have it audited than estimated.
Our 2024 diversion rate was 94.1%. That number is on our sustainability page, in our customer ESG packets, and on the back of the marketing one-pager. It is, as far as we can tell, the only specific diversion percentage published by any independent gaylord refinery in the Midwest. That's not because the number is special. It's because the practice of publishing it isn't common.
Why most don't
Three reasons most vendors don't publish a diversion percentage. First, they don't measure it precisely. Most rely on internal estimates from receiving logs that haven't been audited. Second, it's not flattering for everyone — a vendor whose number is 78% might prefer not to advertise it. Third, the legal team at most large companies prefers ambiguous claims ("committed to sustainability") over specific ones ("94.1% diverted").
Specific is harder. Specific is also more useful.
Why we do
The customer ESG reporting requirement is the immediate reason. About a third of our customers now ask for a defensible diversion number in their sustainability documentation. We'd rather have one number we publish externally than thirty slightly different numbers we send to thirty customers.
There's also a pure-honesty reason. We've built a business around the claim that reused boxes are better than new ones. Saying "94.1% diverted" makes that claim auditable. Saying "sustainability matters to us" makes the claim unfalsifiable. The first is more credible, even if the percentage is less than 100%.
The audit
The number is third-party audited by a regional waste-stream consultancy. They reconcile our receiving logs, our outbound shipping logs, and our recycling-line tonnage manifests, and they produce a verified rate annually. We pay them for the audit. We'd pay more if it made the number 100%, but it wouldn't, and we'd rather have the right number than the prettier one.
What it would take to get higher
To move from 94.1% to 96% or higher, we'd need to do two things. Capture some of the boxes that fall just below C-grade and route them through additional refurbishing instead of recycling. Reduce small-scale contamination losses (wet inbound, chemical residue) that today force us to send some material to recycle. Neither is impossible. Both cost more than they save at our current scale.
So 94.1 it is. Next year we'll report what we measure. If it's lower, we'll report that. If it's higher, we'll report that. The number is the number, and that's the point.
Related field notes.
Every grade we put on an invoice has to pass a quiet honesty test. Here's the test, and why we made it explicit a year ago.
Read →Scope 3, embodied carbon, diversion rates, FSC chain of custody. If your CFO suddenly wants packaging numbers for the annual report, here's a 12-minute crash course.
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