§ 06Knowledge
Everything we know,
written down and
given away.
No gated downloads, no email wall, no stock photography of leaves. Thirty-five long reads, forty-eight answers, a 75-term glossary and a seven-page technical reference — because an informed buyer specifies better and argues less.
- Articles
- 35
- FAQ answers
- 48
- Glossary terms
- 75
- Reference pages
- 7
- No signup required
- No gated PDFs
- Every figure sourced
- Written by the people who grade the totes
- Including the numbers that don't flatter us
§ 06.1Four resources
Start wherever your question is.
- K-01
Blog
35 long reads on grading, carbon arithmetic, logistics, compliance, materials and operations. Written by graders rather than marketers.
35 articles - K-02
FAQ
Forty-eight direct answers across buying, selling, specification, compliance, logistics and sustainability.
48 answers - K-03
Glossary
75 terms from the reclaim floor, defined properly — including the ones the industry uses loosely.
75 terms - K-04
Size Guide
Dimensions, capacities, resin codes, pallet types, UN ratings, grading criteria and fittings across seven reference pages.
7 pages
§ 06.1.1By topic
Nine kinds of question.
The blog is organised by the kind of problem rather than the kind of product.
6 articles
Sustainability
Latest: Zero landfill, ten years on: what it cost and what it saved
Dec 2025
6 articles
Buying Guides
Latest: Specifying totes for a new blending line
Nov 2025
5 articles
Inside the Yard
Latest: What we learned from 400,000 graded totes
Oct 2025
5 articles
Reference
Latest: Chloride stress corrosion: when stainless fails
Jan 2025
4 articles
Logistics
Latest: Running a tote fleet on a spreadsheet (and when to stop)
Mar 2025
4 articles
Operations
Latest: The economics of repair: a $14 gasket vs a $180 tote
Jun 2025
2 articles
Compliance
Latest: What a previous-contents declaration should contain
Jul 2024
2 articles
Industries
Latest: Breweries, distilleries and the 275-gallon problem
Aug 2025
1 articles
Upcycling
Latest: Eleven things to build from a retired tote bottle
Dec 2023
§ 06.1.2Most read
Where most people start.
Buying Guides · 11 min
Reconditioned vs. new: the honest comparison
Where a reconditioned IBC tote is genuinely the better buy, where it genuinely is not, and the three specifications that should decide it rather than habit.
Sustainability · 14 min
The carbon math of reusing a tote
Every number behind our impact claims, worked through long-hand — including the ones that make reuse look less heroic than the marketing version.
Compliance · 12 min
What actually makes a tote food-grade
Compliant resin is the easy part and the part everyone cites. The segregation, the fill history and the documentation are the hard parts, and all four are required.
Reference · 10 min
Permeation: the invisible contamination risk
The mechanism behind most reconditioned-container complaints, explained properly — what permeates, how fast, why washing cannot reverse it, and how to buy around it.
Buying Guides · 9 min
What a used IBC tote is actually worth
Five factors set the price of a used IBC tote, and only one of them is the thing most sellers focus on. A walk through how a reclaim buyer actually values a yard full of empties.
Reference · 10 min
Reading the UN marking plate: a field guide
The densest label in industrial packaging, decoded element by element — and a clear statement of the four things it does not tell you.
- 35
- Articles published
- 48
- FAQ answers
- 75
- Glossary terms
- 0
- Email walls
Oldest from February 2022.
Six categories.
Including the loosely-used ones.
Everything here is free.
Why we publish all of this
Because an informed buyer specifies the right thing, argues less about grade letters, and does not get sold a new tote when a reconditioned one would do. All three of those outcomes are better for us as well as for them.
And because this industry has a credibility problem that only gets solved by people showing their working.
The direct route
Or skip the reading and just ask us.
Describe the situation in a paragraph. You'll get a specific answer faster than you'll find it here.