Wooden pallets are a ubiquitous part of our world, an essential component of the global
supply chains that we rely on to get stuff from one place to another. They are also
very common in and around houses, gardens and growing spaces for a lot of different purposes,
and are the basic building block and material source for a wide range of different DIY projects.
I live in a rural part of Ireland at the end of a long distribution network,
and there seems to be very little interest in returning these pallets to where they can be
reused in their original purpose, and good quality pallets are often left behind. So
I've been acquiring pallets for many years now, and I use them in and around the gardens, and
I've lost track of how many that I've brought into the space. But even though they have been useful,
I never really figured out what was going to happen to them after they ceased to be useful,
and I now regret using so many pallets for a particular purpose.
Like so many other gardeners and growers, the main thing I've used pallets for is to build compost
bins, as it's very quick to make a structure to hold all of the composting material by tying,
screwing or fixing 4 pallets together. Depending on the type of pallet, they can be quite good at
containing the loose material, but are also open enough to let in air, an essential component of
the decomposition process. The volume contained by 4 standard sized pallets is fairly close
to what many people consider to be large enough to enable the compost to heat up effectively, but
small enough to allow air in so that the aerobic decomposition process can continue. And it is
also possible to place an additional pallet at the base so that air can flow underneath the compost,
reducing the chance that sections of the compost deep in the pile run out of oxygen and become
anaerobic. And with a few more pallets fastened together in an appropriate way, a series of
compost bays can be made, and it is quite common to see two or there bays like this in a row. I
have used pallets to construct many different versions of composting systems in the past,
but a few years ago I stopped using them to construct the main outside enclosure,
and I've have recently decided to stop using any pallets in my composting systems at all.
The main reason for deciding to not use pallets any more in my composting systems
is that they get really wet, and start to rot, and within a few years they start to fall apart
and become a problem. Compost is usually moist, full of nitrogen and other nutrients,
and is often quite warm even at the edges, as well as teeming with a huge diversity of biology. This
can be the perfect ecosystem for degrading wood, especially when lots of fungi can
flourish in the slightly warm but not too hot edges of an active compost pile,
right next to the wood of the pallet. So the wood can degrade quite quickly, depending on the
type of wood that the pallet is made of, and if it's been treated at some point in the past. But
the decomposition or rotting of the wood is never evenly spread out, with some sections
decaying and falling apart, and other parts of the pallet still being in quite good shape. So
I end up with pallets that no longer structurally sound enough to use to contain a compost pile,
but too broken and dirty to be of use for anything else, but not decayed enough to fully fall apart.
A pallet may last for a few years in a compost system,
and then I would simply replace it with a new pallet, but the issue that I've struggled
with is what to do with the heavy, wet and half rotten remains of the older pallet.
I have also found that using pallets in this way provides numerous places for rats to get into the
compost material, but because of the way that most pallets are built, it can be very difficult to get
them out again. I've found this is especially the case when I have several compost bins in a row,
with a gap within each pallet providing a perfect place for rats to be able to concealed
an entrance to their burrow, a place to hide and easily move from one pile to the next. This
is also the case when I put a pallet on the ground to allow air flow under the compost material,
all this gives rats lots of access, but makes them difficult to deal with. My
current method for killing rats is to asphyxiate them in their nests
and burrows by burning my flame weeding torch into one of the burrow entrances. I've
found that the smoke and problematic gasses can be really effective at killing all the
rats in a nest, but only if I am able to block up all of the other entrances, except for the
one with that the torch goes in, and there can be quite a few holes in an established rat warren.
But when pallets are used to contain a compost pile, I often seem to miss a spot that the rats
can escape from, and the exit is often located in a spot that is very difficult to seal up,
even if I know it's there. So I have found that pallets are often incompatible with the preferred
method that I use for dealing with one of the main problems with compost piles in general.
So, a number of years ago I moved away from using pallets to form the outside of the compost bins,
and replaced them with panels of chicken wire fixed to a frame that I made out of treated
wood. I have tried a number of different versions of these panels, but all of them are better than
the pallets, in that they are a lot lighter and easier to move around, let in more air,
but contain the compost material better, and will last a lot longer. They
also significantly reduce the possible entrances into the compost by rats, or at least it forces
the rats to make burrows in places that are much easier to gain access to with my flame weeder. I
have still used pallets as dividers between each of the batches of compost in the row, which
provide some structural stability and separation, and a useful base to screw the outside panels too,
but I also used them simply because the pallets were there and convenient and meant I didn't need
to make something else to replace them. But they still get wet and decayed, and become a
hassle just like the other ones, so from now on I am not going to use any pallets at all,
and I hope that I'm never tempted to use pallets again in my composting systems.
On top of the fact that they only last a few years the main issue is disposal,
what do I do with the half rotten, soaking wet, pallet that are falling apart. They
can be useful for a while in holding down tarps and to prevent things from blowing away, but not
much else. I’ve used pallets in this way for more than 10 years, so I've end up with a lot of broken
rotting wood with lots of nails sticking out, and I have a significant backlog of old broken
pieces of pallets to deal with. I have made a few hügelcultur mounds with them, which makes
a certain amount of sense as they are already starting to rot, and have probably soaked up a
lot of fertility, and I figure that the nails will just rust away eventually. But they need to be
broken apart more top be able to consolidate the material into a useable pile that can be covered
with soil. And I have been using some of the wood in a bonfire, and I plan to try making biochar out
of some of it, but I first need to find a place to stack it away so that it can dry for a while.
So, I am currently trying to deal with the unanticipated mess from easy solutions that I used
in previous years, and that is not really a task that I want to adding to an already busy season. I
am also not the only person in the shared space where the gardens are located, who has
enthusiastically acquired pallets for different purposes in the past, and there are a lot of
other pallets around that people don’t know what to do with now that they have rotten. I
still use pallets of course, including using them to keep things dry or off the ground in my shed,
and I find it slightly strange that I will use some good quality pallets to construct a
covered spot to dry the old broken pallets enough so that I am able to burn them. I
have also started to dismantle pallets while they are still in good shape, to break them down
to useable pieces of wood, and have started to use this wood to build useful things in the gardens. I
have also started making a few chairs, adapting a design so that I can make a
comfortable chair out of a single pallet, for use in the gardens and for the outside
gatherings that have become much more common in this past year.
I think this is an excellent example of one of the problems with the tendency that we have of
sharing in this social media connected world, especially with so many new people starting their
own gardens. We see lots of examples of people using pallets for composting systems, but in all
the photos and posts the pallets are almost always new and in good shape. We rarely see what happens
later, when things are falling apart as there is a natural tendency to not want to share this stuff.
But if we're serious about this process of continual improvement and learning from others,
of doing things that work season after season, then at the very least we should be aware of
the downsides of what we do and promote. There are lots of things that we can use to help us
grow more of our own food, but we should have a sense of how long they can be expected to last,
and to have an good idea about what we will do about it when they no longer work. Personally,
I would not longer recommend that people use pallets any where near their composting systems,
and I would suggest being cautious about bringing them into your growing spaces in general.
But tying together four pallets is the easiest way to start a compost pile,
and sometimes we need to accept the easiest way when we are getting started, because there are
more than enough things to do and sort out. It's also useful to start with something very simple,
cheap and easy at first, rather than spending the time to build a purpose built structure,
as we don't necessarily know what will work well in our context,
and sometimes it's better to experiment first before we start investing in new materials and
spending a lot of time building something. But I wish I had thought a lot more about
the full lifecycle of these cheap and abundant materials from the start, and figured out a
way to wean myself off them years ago, so then I wouldn’t have so much of a mess to deal with now.