What to do with bulk bins you no longer use: repair, sell or recycle
Three options for bulk bins you no longer use: repair them, sell them to us as used, or recycle them with a licensed waste manager.
Every warehouse has its corner: a row of bulk bins stacked at the back of the building, behind the forklift, that have not moved in two seasons. Some with a broken leg, others with a wall stove in by a forklift knock, and a few in perfectly good condition that were left over when you changed size grade or crop. They take up square metres you pay for, get in the way of stocktaking, and lose a little value every year that passes.
The good news is that a plastic bulk bin is almost never rubbish. What to do with bulk bins you no longer use has three possible answers: repair it, sell it as used, or recycle it, and choosing correctly comes down to looking at four things: what has broken, how many matching units you have, whether you will keep using that format, and what the container has held. Let's go through it step by step.
First: sort the pile into three groups
Before calling anyone, set aside half a morning to sort. You do not need more criteria than this.
Group A, sound or nearly so: they close, stack stably, with no cracks running through the wall. At most they are missing a leg or a lid.
Group B, broken but intact: cracked wall, warped base, a split side. The overall structure holds but you would not trust them at full load.
Group C, for scrap: broken in several places, sun-damaged to the point of being brittle, or having held product you cannot guarantee is clean.
Count the units in each group and note the model and size (1200 x 1000 x 580 or 780 mm, vented or solid, with legs or with skids). With that data, a valuation stops being guesswork.
Repair: when the breakage is a part, not the container
Most "write-offs" in a bulk bin fleet are not breaks in the body: they are legs snapped from poor support, detached skids or missing lids. And those are parts. In accessories you will find the ones that break most often: legs for Big Box, side skids in the Contenur model, centre skids and lids, compatible with the standard 1200x1000 models.
Repair when all three of these apply:
What is broken is a replaceable part, not the body of the bulk bin.
You have several units with the same fault (spare parts pay off much better in batches than one at a time).
You will keep using that format for at least one more season.
Do not repair if the body has cracks running through it, if the floor has warped under load, or if the plastic has already gone brittle: in those cases the spare part only delays the problem, and you are gambling with stacked loads. If you would rather not fit the spare part yourself, our workshop repairs the bulk bin directly; you decide whose hands do the work.
Sell: if you have a surplus, do not let it sit and age
An idle bulk bin depreciates without giving you anything in return. If you have sound units in a format you no longer use, or simply excess fleet after changing crop, the clean way out is to sell them to us. We buy plastic bulk bins and pallets, vented and solid 1200x1000 Big Box, crates and other industrial containers, and damaged material too: whatever can be reconditioned goes back to market as second-hand product, and the rest goes for recycling.
The process is short: you tell us what you have (type, quantity and approximate condition), we give you a no-obligation valuation, we arrange collection at your site at no cost, and you get paid once the material has been collected and checked. You have the full details at sell used bulk bins.
A practical tip: group by model before asking for a valuation and take a couple of photos of each pile. A uniform, well-described batch is valued faster and better than forty assorted bulk bins in a heap.
Recycle: the way out for Group C
What cannot be repaired or resold does not have to end up in a construction skip. The polyethylene in a bulk bin is a recoverable raw material, and it should leave your building via a licensed waste manager, with traceability documented right through to the end of the cycle. That is exactly what our reuse and recycling service covers: we collect, sort, bring reusable stock back as second-hand product, and recycle the rest.
One point that is easy to overlook: the container is recycled, the waste it held is not. If the bulk bin, drum or IBC has been in contact with pesticides, oils or any hazardous product, do not mix it with clean plastic, and tell us when describing the batch. That route has its own circuit and its own management process.
What if the problem is that you bought too much?
It happens often: the season is sized around the peak, and then the peak does not arrive. If your need is seasonal, maybe the answer is not to buy and then find a home for the surplus, but to rent bulk bins for the peak and keep only your base fleet in ownership. And if what you have left over is the wrong format, take a look first at the plastic bulk bins datasheet or ask us: switching height, or moving from legs to skids, solves more warehouse problems than it seems.
Do your count by pile and call us or write to us via contact: we will tell you what to repair, what we will buy from you and what to collect for recycling. You can also request a quote if you also want to restock your fleet.
