Purchased pallets in scope 3 category 1
Pallets you buy are purchased goods, so their cradle-to-gate emissions fall in scope 3 category 1. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory's 2020 LCA of US wooden pallets (FPL-RP-707) found raw material supply and manufacturing each contributed about a third of the product-stage greenhouse gas emissions.
Where purchases go
Category 1 includes all upstream (cradle-to-gate) emissions from producing goods the company buys in the reporting year (Scope 3 Standard, section 5.5). New pallets, recycled pallets and pallet repair services all land here. Pallet rental is a purchased service; ask your pooler for an emissions figure per trip.
What the USDA study found
FPL-RP-707 assessed the cradle-to-grave life cycle of US wooden pallets, including repair and reuse. For the product stage, manufacturing (module A3) contributed about 35% of greenhouse gas emissions and raw material supply (A1) about 34%, much of it from sawing and kiln-drying lumber and from fasteners in assembly (Treesearch abstract).
It also found an average cradle-to-grave global warming impact of about 10.4 kg CO2e per 100,000 lb of product delivered on wooden pallets. That per-delivery framing is useful when comparing pallet programs, but don't use it as a per-pallet purchase factor.
Practical approach
- Ask suppliers for product-specific data first; that is the Standard's preferred method.
- Otherwise use a spend-based or average-data factor and say which.
- Track recycled and new pallets separately, so a switch to recycled shows up when you have supplier data that supports it.
Sources
- Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard GHG Protocol (WRI/WBCSD). Accessed October 27, 2026. Box 5.6 and section 9.5 on avoided emissions; section 5.5 category descriptions.
- Cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of wooden pallet production in the United States (Res. Pap. FPL-RP-707) USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (Alanya-Rosenbaum and Bergman, 2020). Accessed October 27, 2026. Table 2 (p. 8): average weights of 48×40 in. designs.