Home / The Reclaim Pledge
The Reclaim Pledge.
Five things we will never do. We re-sign this every January and post the signature on the wall above the wash bay so the team can throw it back at the founder when something starts to drift.
Hold us to this
Same form, every page. Tell us what you've got or what you need; we send a real quote (not a sales drip).
- Pledge 01
We will not export end-of-life HDPE.
If a regrind buyer can't be audited within North America, we don't ship to them. Period.
- Pledge 02
We will not over-grade a tote to close a sale.
A food-grade label is reserved for totes that meet all three of our food-grade conditions. We've turned down sales over this; we'll keep doing it.
- Pledge 03
We will not charge a hauling fee for usable buy-back.
If you've got 15+ usable totes and we're already on a route, we pick them up free.
- Pledge 04
We will not greenwash our numbers.
The Reclaim Counter is a real measurement. The Sustainability Report is third-party audited. We publish the math.
- Pledge 05
We will not chase scale at the cost of locality.
Adding a second yard 800 miles from here would dilute the loop. We'd rather grow density at one yard than franchise a brand.
Signed, re-signed, and posted on the wash-bay wall. — The IBC Columbus team, January 2026.
Why each pledge exists
Each pledge is a response to a specific industry pattern we wanted to opt out of. Here's the backstory.
Pledge 01 — no export
Around 2018, before we started the yard, the founder watched a regional polymer broker ship containers of mixed-color HDPE regrind to a buyer in Southeast Asia. Three months later, beach-cleanup photos from the destination country showed bottle fragments in the same blend the broker had shipped. That experience is the entire reason this pledge exists.
Pledge 02 — no over-grading
Our food-grade label is a real claim. Some yards in the industry routinely apply "food-grade" to anything that's been washed once. We won't, because the customer pays the price downstream when their audit fails. Our food-grade definition is internally enforced by the wash-bay lead, who has authority to drop a tote to industrial if it doesn't pass.
Pledge 03 — no hauling fee for usable buy-back
Industry-standard practice is to charge a pickup fee on top of the per-tote buy-back price, sometimes turning what looks like a $45/tote payout into a net loss for the seller. We don't do this for usable totes on existing routes. The math works because we backhaul; the seller's experience is much better when they don't have to argue line items.
Pledge 04 — no greenwashing the numbers
Our annual report has a "where we still need to do better" section because the industry's typical sustainability marketing is so rosy that nobody believes it. We're trying to set a different bar by publishing the misses alongside the wins.
Pledge 05 — no scale-at-cost-of-locality
We get acquisition pitches roughly twice a year — from larger reconditioning networks, from private equity, from a tote-distribution chain that wants to add a "branded reconditioning" arm. We say no because expansion via acquisition would dilute the loop. The yard works because of density, not sprawl.
Holding us accountable
If we ever break one of these pledges, we want to hear about it. Email hello@ibccolumbus.com with "pledge concern" in the subject and we'll respond directly. We've never had to apologize for a pledge violation, and we'd like to keep it that way.
The pledge is signed yearly because principles drift if you don't re-sign them. The signing happens at our Q1 all-hands; everyone on the team signs.