Year
by year.
Any of this prompt a question? The form reaches the same people who were there for it.
Seventeen years, four decisions that mattered, and one year we nearly did not survive. Intake grew from about 1,100 containers to 66,300 while the reuse share went from roughly two thirds to 93% — and the two are connected, because every improvement to the reuse rate started as a cost problem.
- 2009
A borrowed flatbed and sixteen totes
Founded in a rented bay off Natural Bridge Road with one truck, a pressure washer and sixteen used 275 gallon totes bought from a syrup bottler in Granite City. First-year intake: about 1,100 containers. Everything was washed by hand with a wand, which in hindsight used roughly five times the water it needed to.
- 2011
First proper wash bay
A second-hand rotating spray head and a 500 gallon recirculating tank replaced the wand. Water per tote fell from above 40 gallons to about 18. It was the first time we understood that the environmental case and the cost case were the same case.
- 2012
Moved to Page Industrial Boulevard
Six thousand square feet of indoor space and two acres of yard. The address we still operate from. It let us hold inventory through a winter instead of flipping every load, which is what made grading by hand economically possible.
- 2014
The zero-landfill decision
We costed disposal properly and found the hauler invoice exceeded the scrap value of the same material. The landfill decision was losing money as well as being indefensible. No load has left here for a cell since. Intake that year: 9,400 units, 71% reused.
- 2015
First fleet buyback programme
A fertiliser blender in central Illinois with forty empties a month agreed to a standing collection schedule. It worked so well it became the template for the whole programme side of the business, and it taught us that backhaul routing was our real competitive advantage.
- 2016
We shut off the phone line
After a dispute over a grade that neither party could prove, we stopped taking calls. Everything in writing: quotes, grades, prior-contents records, freight terms. We lost a handful of customers immediately and stopped having arguments almost entirely. The hardest decision on this list and the one we would make fastest again.
- 2016
Closed-loop caustic wash line commissioned
Three-stage separator, carbon polish, recirculating caustic charge. Make-up water per tote fell under 9 gallons and we could finally wash oil residues properly instead of declining them.
- 2018
Rebottling bench added
The realisation that roughly 70% of an IBC's embodied carbon sits in the steel, not the plastic. If the bottle is compromised and the frame is fine, scrapping the frame to get a clean bottle is waste dressed as caution. Reuse rate reached 81%.
- 2019
Fabrication shop opens
Heated-blade jig, welding bay, bulkhead drilling. Built to attack the one number that would not move: the 19% of intake that could be neither washed nor rebottled. A bottle that cannot hold 2,400 lb of water will hold sixty cubic feet of compost for a decade.
- 2020
A difficult year, honestly
Food and beverage demand collapsed for five months while agricultural demand held. We came within a fortnight of furloughing the wash line. What saved us was the buyback side: plants shutting down generated enormous volumes of empties, and we had the only routes already running. Intake rose to 31,500 even as revenue fell.
- 2021
Stainless programme started
Idle 304 and 316L tanks behind closed plants turned out to be worth far more to a buyer than to a scrap yard. We stopped reconditioning stainless speculatively and started matchmaking it against a wants list, which is a different and better business.
- 2022
The second-look review formalised
A written rule: nothing enters the regrind bunker until a second grader answers no to four salvage questions. It immediately pulled about 11% of the scrap-routed stream back out. Reuse rate 90%.
- 2023
Quarterly diversion statements
A fleet customer asked for something they could quote in a sustainability filing. We built the statement, then realised we should publish our own method too — which became the carbon math page. Several of our own figures went down as a result.
- 2024
Steel pallet recovery added
Separating and baling steel pallet bases rather than selling them mixed. Small margin, meaningful tonnage: about 32 lb per unit that had been going out at mixed-scrap pricing.
- 2025
66,300 containers, 93% reused
Current operating level. The reuse share has risen every year since 2014 while intake grew sixfold, which is the only growth statistic here we actually care about.
- 2026
Where we are now
Working on two things. An outlet for valves and gaskets, the one material stream we still cannot place and currently stockpile at about four tons. And extending closed-loop programmes, because a container that never leaves our custody chain is the only one whose diversion rate is genuinely 100%.
Intake, by year
- 2009
- ≈1,100
- 2014
- 9,400
- 2016
- 16,200
- 2018
- 24,800
- 2020
- 31,500
- 2022
- 44,100
- 2024
- 58,700
- 2025
- 66,300
The four that mattered
- 2014 — stop landfilling anything
- 2016 — everything in writing
- 2018 — rebottle rather than replace
- 2019 — fabricate rather than shred
Each one started as an accounting observation and turned out to be an environmental one.
Seventeen years of writing things down
If you have a historical order, a grade query or an old certificate, we almost certainly still have the record.