Scope 3 narrative
Purchased-goods emissions avoided through reuse, with the methodology footnoted. We will send the figures on letterhead for your report.
Sustainability / impact calculator
Your containers, your numbers
Set the quantity, the container and what happens to them. Everything recalculates instantly, in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
- Sheet
- 35
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
Container
What happens to them
Wash & re-release
Avoided emissions25,440lb CO₂e
16,080lb HDPE kept in service
23,280lb diverted from landfill
5,520gal fresh water saved
7,320kWh embodied energy avoided
Which is roughly the same as
- 28,584 miles not driven in an average US car
- 530 mature trees working for a year
- 325 ten-minute showers of water
- 252 days of electricity for an average home
Where every number in that calculator comes from
If a sustainability tool will not show you its arithmetic, it is a marketing widget. Here is ours, including what it does not account for.
| Figure | Value used | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Embodied CO₂e, new composite IBC | 262 lb | Published HDPE resin and galvanised steel production factors applied to a 126 lb container plus freight |
| CO₂e avoided, reuse as-is | 212 lb | Embodied figure less our own wash, handling and transport energy |
| CO₂e avoided, rebottle | 162 lb | Reuses cage and pallet (≈60% of mass); new bottle accounted at full cost |
| CO₂e avoided, recycle | 95 lb | Credit for displaced virgin HDPE, less granulation energy |
| HDPE per 275 gal bottle | 134 lb | Measured average across our 2025 granulator feed |
| Water saved per wash | 46 gal | Difference between open-loop wash and our recovery loop |
| Embodied energy | 61 kWh | Resin production and moulding energy per container |
| Landfill diversion | 194 lb | Full container mass less hardware we cannot recover |
Equivalence factors
- Miles not driven: 0.89 lb CO₂e per mile, based on a US average passenger vehicle.
- Mature trees working for a year: 48 lb CO₂e sequestered per tree per year.
- Ten-minute showers: 17 gallons each.
- Average home electricity: 29 kWh per day.
What it does not include
Your own transport emissions, the emissions of whatever you fill the container with, and end-of-life beyond our yard. It is a container-decision calculator, not a full life-cycle assessment, and we will not pretend otherwise.
How customers actually use these numbers
Bid packets
Municipal and institutional buyers cite the grade standard and diversion methodology directly in specifications.
Capex justification
The cost comparison plus the avoided emissions is usually enough to get a pooling program approved.
Need this on letterhead?
Put your quantity and container type in the form with 'impact statement' in the message and we will send a signed figure set for your reporting period.
Four decisions, run through the numbers
Abstract figures are hard to judge. These are four real purchasing decisions at the scale customers actually make them.
| Decision | Containers | Path | CO₂e avoided | Equivalent to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A farm buys Grade B instead of new | 24 | Reuse | 5,088 lb | 5,700 miles not driven |
| A blender rebottles instead of replacing | 120 | Rebottle | 19,440 lb | 405 trees working a year |
| A co-op sells empties instead of burying them | 280 | Reuse | 59,360 lb | 66,700 miles not driven |
| A plant clears 400 containers responsibly | 400 | Mixed | 66,800 lb | 30 metric tons of CO₂e |
- The single biggest lever available to a buyer is choosing reconditioned over new: roughly 212 lb of CO₂e per container.
- Rebottling saves about 162 lb per container, because the cage and pallet — 60% of the mass — are reused and only the polyethylene is new.
- Recycling still avoids about 95 lb, by displacing virgin HDPE in whatever gets moulded from the regrind.
- Selling empties rather than disposing of them is the lever most companies have and do not use, and it pays rather than costs.
What this calculator is not
- It is not a life-cycle assessment. It models one decision — what container you buy and what happens to it afterwards — and nothing else.
- It is not third-party verified. The factors are published next to the figures so you can check them, and a reviewer would be right to call internal calculation a limitation.
- It does not include your freight, your product, or the container's life after it leaves you.
- It does not include our own operational emissions, which run roughly one eighth of the avoided figure and are published in the annual report.
- It does not produce a number you should put in a regulated disclosure without reading the methodology section first.
Can I use these figures in an ESG report?
Many customers do, footnoted to our published methodology. Ask for the figures on letterhead for your reporting period and we will include the limitations in writing so nobody is surprised later.
Why is the stainless multiplier only 2.4?
Because it reflects mass, not life. A stainless vessel's real advantage is twenty to thirty years of service, which is a cost-per-fill argument rather than an embodied-carbon one, and this tool does not model time.
Does the water figure include your sludge handling?
It includes the fresh water difference between open-loop and recovery washing. Sludge volumes are reported separately in the annual report rather than netted against the saving.
What if my containers go to somebody else afterwards?
Then the reuse credit is still real — the container exists and was not replaced. What this tool cannot tell you is what the next owner does with it, which is why the boundary is stated rather than assumed.