Annual numbers, 2023 edition

The 2023 recap. This was the first year we hired a third-party environmental engineering firm to audit our numbers, so the methodology shifts slightly from prior internal-only reporting.

Totes diverted from landfill: 14,820. A big year-over-year jump from ~10,400 in 2022, mostly from new contract pickups across our 5-state region.

Virgin HDPE displaced: 283,062 kg. Total resin not pulled from a cracker plant.

CO₂e avoided: 569,088 kg cradle-to-gate. First year we calculated this with the audited methodology.

Wash water reclaimed: 89.4%. Up from 84% in 2022. Two filter upgrades and a process change in the wash sequence.

Pelletized in-house: 41,210 kg. First year the granulator was running fully optimized — added a float-tank wash that improved pellet quality enough that we got two new molder customers.

Truck miles per tote sold: 3.81. Higher than we wanted. The Indianapolis and Pittsburgh pickup expansion meant a lot of long-haul, mostly because we weren't yet good at backhauling those routes.

Net new headcount: 3. A welder, a second driver, and the inventory and QC lead.

One miss: cage straightening throughput. The press fixture was a homemade thing built in 2020, and it bottlenecked at about 18 cages per shift. We rebuilt it (forklift mast hydraulics) in early 2024 to push throughput to 35.

One win: launched the Reclaim Counter. First time we put our operating numbers on the homepage in real time. Customers loved it; one big customer cited it as a reason for their procurement decision.

Onward.