Plastic Pallets – Improved Compost Bins

Some years ago, I shared how to build compost bins cheaply and easily from pallets. Building compost bins from pallets has to be the quickest and easiest way to produce a pair – or more – of serviceable compost bins.

Plastic pallet on the side of the compost bin

However, wooden pallets don’t last forever, around five years if you’re lucky. That’s because the contents of the bin, which are biologically active as they rot down, are in contact with the pallet wood. The pallet rarely gets to dry out and so it rots away. Even treated wood doesn’t seem to last much longer.

Plastic Pallets – Practically Last Forever

Well, things change over time, and it’s been quite a few years since I wrote about building compost bins. So it was informative to get an email from Mick S., a subscriber to my free gardening newsletters. Mick told me that he builds compost bins from plastic pallets, which practically last forever.

He makes leaf mould in a bin made of plastic pallets and rots down large volumes of horse manure in a large plastic pallet bin. Mick tells me that the plastic pallets were found by his wife, and they’re cheap to buy – effectively lasting forever.

I decided to do a little research and found a number of suppliers online selling second hand plastic pallets. There’s a range of prices, but even the cheapest say the pallet has a load capacity of 1000 kg. More than sufficient strength for a compost bin.

Do spend time shopping around, there’s a wide variation in prices. With second hand pallets, you’ll find a lot of listing that end ‘out of stock’. Still, trade a couple of hours of your time and save money. If you’re very rich and your time extremely valuable, ask one’s butler to do it.

Mick enclosed a couple of pictures of his bin full of horse manure. I’ve updated my article on building compost bins from pallets to reflect the availability of plastic pallets.

Large compost bin full of horse manure constructed from plastic pallets.