The short version
- Unknown prior contents is not a discount — it is an unbounded liability.
- A soft or tacky wall means the resin has been attacked; that container is finished.
- We refuse rather than downgrade, because grading a mystery is still selling a mystery.
- Refused containers still get recycled, usually at no cost to the seller.
What refusing costs us
Let me start with the uncomfortable part. Every container I turn away is a container we have often already paid to collect, and sometimes already paid for. Six per cent of intake is a real number against a real margin.
It would be easy to be more relaxed. Downgrade the questionable ones to Grade C, sell them as-is with a shrug, let the buyer decide. Plenty of operations do exactly that and their refusal rate is close to zero.
The reason we do not is that Grade C is still a grade. It still comes with a prior-contents record and our name on it. A container we cannot describe honestly cannot be sold at any grade, because the grade is the description.
The five reasons, by frequency
| Reason | Share of refusals | Negotiable? |
|---|---|---|
| Prior contents cannot be named | 44% | No |
| Chemical attack — soft or tacky wall | 21% | No |
| Stress-crazing past testing | 17% | No, but we buy at scrap |
| Cage or base-ring failure | 11% | Sometimes — depends on the cage |
| Regulated-empty paperwork inadequate | 7% | Yes, usually fixable |
Unknown prior contents: the one that is not a discount
Nearly half of what we refuse, and the only category where I will not have a conversation about price. If nobody can tell me what was in a container, there is no number that makes it worth buying.
The reasoning is not squeamishness. Everything downstream of us depends on the prior-contents record being true. A container we sell as food-grade to a brewery, or as industrial to a blender who checks compatibility against what we told them, is only as safe as that record. If the record is a guess, we have moved the risk onto somebody who does not know they are carrying it.
Sellers sometimes hear this as an accusation and it is not. Most unknown-history containers reach a seller through two or three hands, and the information was lost long before they touched it. It is nobody's fault. It is still unbuyable.
Chemical attack: the wall tells you
HDPE resists most water-based chemistry very well. It is attacked by aromatic and chlorinated solvents, some ketones, strong oxidisers at concentration and a few surprising things — limonene-based degreasers among them.
The wall goes soft, sometimes faintly tacky, and dimensionally strange. You feel it before you see it: press a thumb into the side and it should be firm with a definite spring back. A container that gives, or feels slightly sticky, has had its resin attacked.
This is the one where I will not take the paperwork's word. If the wall feels wrong, the container goes to granulation regardless of what the declaration says, because I do not know what got put into it after the declaration was written.
The one that is usually fixable
Inadequate documentation on regulated empties is 7% of refusals and it is the category where we genuinely try to help, because the containers are almost always fine.
Under 40 CFR 261.7 a container that held a regulated material must be properly emptied before it ships, and depending on the material there may be manifest requirements. What we need is evidence of that, not a verbal assurance.
Priya has a rinse-record template that takes about ten minutes per lot to complete. Send us the prior product name and the safety data sheet before booking a collection and we will tell you exactly which path applies. Most of the time the answer is "nothing special, ship them" — but finding that out beforehand is free and finding it out afterwards is not.
What happens to a refused container
It does not go back on the truck. For non-hazardous containers we take them into the recycling stream at no cost — the recovered HDPE and steel cover the handling, and it is better for everyone than the container going to a transfer station.
You get a diversion note showing the weight and destination, which some customers find useful for their own reporting. For containers that require hazardous handling there is a disposal fee, quoted in advance and itemised, and nothing gets sprung on anyone at the gate.
Written by Desmond Okafor, yard manager at IBC Totes San Francisco. Published July 24, 2025. Spotted something wrong? Tell us — we would rather fix it than defend it.