We keep tanks in
circulation.
Pittsburgh Totes Recycling is a family-run reconditioning yard in McKees Rocks, PA. Since 2008 we've bought, cleaned, and re-sold used IBC totes — and recycled the ones that couldn't be saved. One stubborn rule runs the whole place: no landfill.
Skip the phone tag. Leave a note — we'll reply by email.
We weren't looking to start a recycling company. We were looking for a 275-gallon tote for a neighbor's pickle brine business, and we couldn't find a reconditioned one anywhere in Allegheny County. So we bought six. Then we bought sixty. Then we learned how to triple-rinse them properly, and suddenly the back lot was full.
That was 2008. Today the yard sits on 11,000 square feet behind the old B&O rail line, with a full reconditioning bay, a 3-inch granulator, and — as of last year — a tidy little public ledger that tracks every tank from the moment it rolls in to the moment it ships out or becomes pellets.
We don't have a phone. That's on purpose. Every contact goes through email so we can keep a written record for every quote, every pickup, every weight slip. It keeps us honest and keeps your inbox useful.
If you'd like the long version — how we nearly closed in 2011, what a botched triple-rinse looks like, or why we moved to McKees Rocks — keep reading on Our Story. If you'd rather skip to the receipts, the Sustainability Promise lays out the numbers we publish.
The yard, in numbers.
Our address is 1243 Thompson Avenue, McKees Rocks, PA 15136 — a 3.2-acre parcel wedged between the old B&O rail cut and the Ohio River floodplain. It isn't glamorous. It wasn't cheap. It's the largest contiguous paved yard zoned M-2 within four miles of the 376/79 interchange, which is exactly what this work needs.
- 3.2 acres
- Total parcel footprint
- 11,000 sq ft
- Covered reconditioning bay
- 2,400 sq ft
- Climate-controlled food-grade cell
- 7
- Dock-high bays and rail siding stubs
- 42 tons
- Steady-state inventory on the pad
- 1,850
- Tanks we can physically stage at once
- 2
- 26-foot box trucks in the fleet
- 1
- Hydrostatic UN31A test rig (certified annually)
What we actually do here.
Five intake streams, four outbound streams, one shared yard. Here's the flow we run, most days, in roughly the order it happens.
Intake inspection
Every arriving tank gets a four-axis read (cage · valve · residue · HDPE clarity) and a paper tag with a six-digit ID before it leaves the receiving pad.
Pre-wash triage
Heavy-residue tanks go to a holding line; clean decommissions skip ahead to the power-wash bay. We don't mix caustic and food streams in the same shift.
Triple-rinse + sanitize
Hot water at 180 °F, rotating spray ball, food-safe sanitizer where applicable. A fourth rinse runs on request for brewery and cidery accounts.
UN31A hydrostatic test
Rebottled and food-grade units get pressure-tested to 100 kPa for 5 minutes. Pass/fail is logged with unit ID and date.
Grading + ledger entry
Tank is assigned A, B, or C and keyed into the public ledger with photos, origin, test results, and outbound destination when known.
Reclamation or dispatch
Salvageable tanks head to the outbound stage area. Retired tanks move to the granulator — cage to scrap, valve to elastomer reclaim, pellet to U.S. re-bottlers.
Certifications & memberships.
We carry the paperwork a serious industrial packaging yard is expected to carry. No more, no less. If you need a document we haven't listed, email the yard and we'll send it along with the next quote.
Annual DOT-registered hydrostatic test rig inspection. Cert number on request for each rebottled unit we sell.
Member since 2014. We attend the annual conference and have voted on two ballot items on reconditioning standards.
License PAR-000443, active. Required for moving used totes across county lines inside the Commonwealth.
Industrial supplies dealer with material-recovery classification. Keeps our HDPE pellet sales inside a clean regulatory chain.
For procurement contracts with ALCOSAN, PWSA, and the Port of Pittsburgh Commission.
Our HDPE storage pad is segmented, bollarded, and within the maximum-pile height prescribed by FM DS 8-34.
Things we won't do.
A short, honest list. Some of these cost us real money every year. We keep them anyway because the yard only works if the rules don't move.
- 01We won't accept a tote whose last contents can't be named and labeled. Unknown residue is a downstream liability we won't pass along.
- 02We won't sell a Grade B or C tank for a food-contact job, even if the buyer insists. A rebottle costs less than a recall.
- 03We won't ship beyond a 500-mile one-way radius for single units. The freight carbon eats the reuse benefit — we'll point you to a closer partner yard.
- 04We won't operate a call center. Quotes live in email because email is searchable and because a written record protects both sides when memory gets fuzzy.
- 05We won't shred a salvageable tank for scale. Reclaim is the last resort, not the first — which is why our reuse rate sits at 93% and not 50%.
- 06We won't run a paid loyalty program. Our repeat-customer rate is 71% and we'd like to keep the reason for that simple.