Our Story
In 2008, Marcus Rivera and Elena Park looked at the mountains of discarded pallets piling up behind Sunnyvale warehouses and asked a question nobody else was asking: "Why are we throwing these away?" That question became a garage start-up, which became a certified green business, and which today processes over 150,000 pallets every single year.
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We never set out to build a big company. We just hated seeing perfectly good wood go to waste. Turns out, a lot of other people hated it too.
— Marcus Rivera, Co-Founder
The Founding Vision
Marcus Rivera grew up around sawdust. His father ran a small cabinet shop in Southeast Sunnyvale, and from an early age Marcus understood the value locked inside every plank of Douglas fir and western red cedar. Elena Park, his best friend since middle school, studied environmental science at Sunnyvale State and spent her twenties working in waste reduction for the city. When the two reconnected at a mutual friend's barbecue in the summer of 2007, the conversation turned — as it always did with Elena — to garbage.
"There are thousands of pallets sitting behind warehouses right now," Elena told Marcus. "Most of them are structurally fine. They just need a few boards replaced or a couple of nails hammered back in. But nobody picks them up, so they rot, split, and end up in the landfill." Marcus, who had been looking for a business venture that combined his carpentry skills with something meaningful, didn't need to hear another word.
By October 2007, the pair had drawn up a rudimentary business plan on a legal pad. By January 2008, they had signed a lease on a ramshackle warehouse off NW Industrial, bought a used Ford F-350 flatbed with 180,000 miles on the odometer, and incorporated under the name GreenCycle Pallets LLC. The first week, they collected 347 pallets. Marcus repaired them in the evenings while Elena cold-called every warehouse manager in the metropolitan area. By month three they were profitable.
What made GreenCycle different from the handful of pallet recyclers that had come and gone before was transparency and reliability. Marcus and Elena published their grading criteria openly, showed up on time, and priced their repaired pallets honestly. Word spread fast through Sunnyvale's tight-knit business community, and by 2009 the company had a waiting list for pick-ups.
That early scrappiness never left the culture. Even now, with 40-plus employees and a solar-powered facility, Marcus still walks the repair floor every morning and Elena still personally reviews every sustainability report. The garage spirit endures — just with a much bigger garage.
Fifteen Years of Growth & Impact
A Garage, a Truck, and a Dream
Marcus Rivera and Elena Park — childhood friends and lifelong Sunnyvaleers — pooled their savings to lease a single flatbed truck and a 2,000-square-foot warehouse off NW Industrial Avenue. Their pitch was simple: local businesses were throwing out perfectly reusable pallets because nobody made it easy to recycle them. Marcus and Elena changed that overnight. Within the first month they had collected over 1,200 pallets from loading docks across the city, repaired every salvageable one by hand, and resold them at half the cost of new lumber.
First Community Recycling Program
By their second year the pair had outgrown the original warehouse twice. They launched Sunnyvale's first dedicated pallet recycling program, partnering with the city's waste management bureau to divert pallet wood from the Kirby Canyon landfill. The program offered free pick-up for businesses generating more than twenty pallets per month and introduced a grading system — A, B, and C — that is still used across the Bay Area today. That single initiative kept more than 8,000 pallets out of the waste stream in its debut year alone.
Full Fleet Expansion
Growing demand meant a single flatbed was no longer enough. GreenCycle acquired a fleet of five dedicated transport vehicles — including two 48-foot trailers and a custom side-loader — allowing the company to service customers from Salem to Cambridge, MA in the same business day. The fleet expansion also enabled GreenCycle to begin offering scheduled route pick-ups, giving manufacturers and distributors a reliable, cost-effective way to clear their docks every week without lifting a finger.
50,000-Pallet Milestone
In April 2016 Marcus and Elena rang a literal bell on the warehouse floor when the 50,000th pallet rolled off the repair line. By this point GreenCycle employed 22 full-time workers, operated two shifts per day, and maintained an inventory of over 10,000 pallets ready to ship at any time. The milestone was covered by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and caught the attention of several national logistics firms, who began routing their Bay Area pallet needs exclusively through GreenCycle.
Eco-Certification & ISPM-15 Compliance
Environmental credibility had always been at the core of the business, but 2019 made it official. GreenCycle earned its ISPM-15 heat-treatment certification, allowing repaired pallets to be used in international shipping. The company also obtained Green Business Certification from the City of Sunnyvale and passed an independent third-party audit confirming a 96 % landfill diversion rate. These credentials opened the door to partnerships with export-heavy industries including agriculture, electronics, and automotive parts.
Solar-Powered Operations
GreenCycle installed a 120-kW rooftop solar array on its expanded 18,000-square-foot facility, generating enough electricity to power all indoor operations — from the repair shop saws and nail guns to the office HVAC and lighting. Surplus energy is fed back to the Sunnyvale grid through a net-metering agreement with Sunnyvale General Electric. The investment cut annual utility costs by 72 % and eliminated an estimated 48 metric tons of CO₂ emissions per year.
150,000 Pallets Annually
Fifteen years after Marcus and Elena collected their first truckload, GreenCycle now processes upward of 150,000 pallets every year. The company employs over 40 team members, operates a fleet of 12 vehicles, and serves more than 500 businesses from Eugene to Seattle. Despite the growth, the founding philosophy has never changed: every pallet deserves a second life, and every customer deserves honest, dependable service.
Write the Next Chapter With Us
From a single flatbed to 150,000 pallets a year — imagine what we can accomplish together. Let's talk about your pallet needs.