About us

We are in the
second-hand
business. Proudly.

IBC Recycle is a reuse yard with a wash line, a fabrication bay, five trucks and a filing system. We would rather sell you a tote that has already worked for nine years than a brand-new one that costs the planet twice as much.

Talk to the people who grade the totesNo sales script, no call centre

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* requiredPhone & postal code: US or Canada onlyQuantity 1–10,000

No phone calls from us — we answer by email from sales@ibc-recycle.com. Privacy

What we actually are

A grading operation that happens to own trucks

Anyone can put used totes on a pallet. The hard part is knowing — and proving — what is inside the plastic, what the cage has survived, and what the thing is honestly worth.

We started in 2009 with a borrowed pressure washer and twelve cages behind a body shop. The business grew because of one unglamorous habit: we write things down. Last contents, wash chemistry, weld repairs, loop counts. That paperwork is why a brewery will buy a fifteen-year-old cage from us and put food in it.

Everything else — the trucks, the fabrication bay, the regrind contracts — exists to keep a tote moving through that loop instead of out of it.

Read the full story Tour the facility

Rule one

We never guess at last contents

If the paperwork is missing and the residue is unidentifiable, the bottle goes to regrind. It does not get washed and sold as “probably soap”.

We grade down, not up

A borderline cage is listed at the lower grade. We lose a few dollars a unit and keep every customer we have ever had.

We quote freight honestly

Including the part where a 330 will not fit through your door. We have cancelled orders over door height more than once.

Rows of reconditioned IBC totes stacked two high across the yard under a clear sky — Graded stock staged by grade, not by arrival date — the Livonia yard on an ordinary Tuesday.

By the numbers

Seventeen years of not throwing things away

Totes handled

412k

since 2009

Average loops

5.8

per cage, and climbing

Intake reused

94%

the other 6% is recycled

Trucks

plus partner carriers

Reuse is the environmental strategy

Recycling plastic is better than burying it and much worse than not making it. Our entire operating model is built on that sentence.

Documentation is the product

The tote is a commodity. The passport file attached to it is not — and it is the reason regulated buyers trust reused equipment.

Local loops beat long ones

Most of our totes are collected and re-sold inside a 300-mile radius. Freight is the easiest part of the footprint to get wrong.

Keep reading

Our story2009 to today, honestly toldOpen →Why reused winsThe case, with arithmeticOpen →Ecology & impactCommitments and methodologyOpen →Facility & fleetLivonia, bay by bayOpen →CertificationsWhat we hold, what we don'tOpen →CareersYard, wash line, driversOpen →

Come see a cage before you buy it.

Walk-ins welcome during yard hours at 11966 Brookfield St. Bring a tape measure — we like customers who measure.

We are in thesecond-handbusiness. Proudly.