The first ever Pallet Fest took place in Denver over the weekend, showing many Denverites (Denvernians? Denvertians?) the fun and excitement of upcycling.

What is upcycling, you ask?

Upcycling the “practice of turning old products into a new item when its usable life comes to an end,” according to Pallet Enterprise since upcycling has fast become synonymous with wooden pallets.

This notion is only reinforced with Pallet Fest.

Taking over the duration of two days at Sculpture Park, Pallet Fest repurposed wooden pallets in several ways, creating respective sections that displayed home and garden projects, public art, and even live paint & graffiti art.

In addition, the festival constructed a pallet stage to showcase a slew of live music, an upcycling fashion show (I’m assuming clothes not made of pallets), and a home and garden show.

Rounding up the festivities were a number of other amusements, such as a Pallet Maze, a parkour obstacle course, in which local parkour experts pulled off better moves than Andy Bernard did at Dunder Mifflin (note the pallets), and a 2-day pallet build-off in which two teams were stacked (pun intended) against one another to create an amazing pallet structure. Splinters be to thee victor.

Although I was not at Pallet Fest, it has been deemed a huge success regardless of rain dampening attendance on Sunday and they are hopeful to expand. It seems that upcycling is becoming more accepted with the help of YouTube, Pinterest and even do-it-yourself vendor site, Etsy, all propagating methods for creating and obtaining upcycled items.

With more than 2 billion pallets around the world, there is definitely no shortage of wooden pallets to repurpose.

But why is it that so many wooden pallets only get used a single time in their lifetime and then disregarded? Are wooden pallets tainted by their low cost creating the mindset that they are expendable because they are so cheap to replace or make?

Whatever the reason is, you won’t find many plastic pallets being repurposed, because they’ll still be in circulation doing what they were meant to do: handling materials.

Upcycling is a solution to a problem that is inherent to the traditional ways of doing things, but technology has far surpassed tradition and it’s time to say goodbye to the old ways and embrace, no, invest in the future.

Until that change happens, Pallet Fest definitely takes a step in the right direction – in repurposing the mindset that nothing is single serving.

If you went to Pallet Fest, please share your story, pictures or videos in the comment section!

Pallet Maze

Pallet Build-off

Parkour Obstacle Course

Photos by David Novins courtesy of Pallet Fest

About Brian Pigott

Brian Pigott is an engineer and customer-centric entrepreneur. Brian is the Managing Director of One Way Solutions.

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