IBC ToteTexas

Reuse ledger, year to date: 41,200 totes diverted from Texas landfills this year. 2,060k lb of HDPE kept in service. 1,772k lb of steel cage recovered. 3,140 tons of CO₂e avoided. 92% of our wash water recycled on site. 68 Texas counties served from one Austin yard. Full methodology at /sustainability/reuse-ledger.

Product · second life

When it stops
being a tote,
it becomes this.

Not every container that reaches us should go back into liquid service. Rather than granulate a sound bottle and a straight cage, we cut them into things people need — and the material stays out of the ground for another decade.

Wide view of a warehouse hall filled with reconditioned IBC totes on polished concrete

The short answer

Second-life builds are IBC totes cut, deburred and finished into raised beds, wicking planters, open-top bins, wash stations and containment. Anything intended for growing food is built exclusively from documented food-grade stock. One tote yields two 22 cubic foot raised beds with the cage retained as a trellis.

Order a build

Tell us which build, how many, and whether anything edible is going to grow in it.

We reply here, so it has to be an inbox you actually read.

US or Canadian number, 10 digits. We format it as you type.

Two-letter code or full name — checked against your postal code.

5-digit US ZIP, or a Canadian postal code like K1A 0B1.

Plain text only. Links can't be submitted through this form.

No phone number required from us — we work by email and we answer fast. Fields marked * are required.

From the yard

Close-up of a single 275 gallon IBC tote showing its capacity label, UN placard and blue ball valve
A 275 with the plate, the capacity label and a standard 2-inch ball valve.
Rows of used 275 gallon composite IBC totes stacked two high in an outdoor yard under a blue sky
Graded stock on the outdoor rows, stacked two high and waiting on a grade tag.

2

raised beds per tote

Horizontal split, cage retained.

22 cu ft

soil per bed

About 16 bags of garden soil.

~40 gal

wicking reservoir

Cuts watering by roughly a third.

10+ yrs

typical service life

HDPE outdoors, shaded, not stressed.

Builds

Eight things we make from finished totes

All cut on our own saws, all deburred, all edge-capped. The edge is the part amateurs skip and the part that sends people to a clinic.

SLB-01

Horizontal split beds

The classic. One tote cut lengthwise gives two raised beds about 22 cubic feet each, each keeping half the cage as a built-in trellis frame. Drainage drilled, edges capped, feet retained from the pallet base.

2 beds per tote · cage retained as trellis

SLB-02

Wicking planters

A vertical build with an internal barrier that holds a water reservoir below the root zone. Plants draw up what they need, watering drops to roughly a third, and Texas summers become survivable for container growing.

≈30 cu ft media · 40 gal reservoir

SLB-03

Open-top grain & waste bins

Top cut below the gasket line, deburred and edge-capped. One bin holds a full 15 bbl batch of spent grain and forklifts straight onto the farmer's trailer. Our most-requested brewery conversion.

≈2,000 lb wet spent grain

SLB-04

Wash & sanitation stations

A tote plumbed with a hand-wash outlet, foot valve or spray wand, mounted on a frame. Common on remote jobsites, event sites and farms with no water hookup.

Plumbed, valved, drain-fitted

SLB-05

Aquaponics & hydroponic frames

The standard hobby and small-commercial build: lower section becomes the fish tank, upper section the grow bed, cage retained as the support frame. Built from F-grade stock only.

Fish tank + grow bed from one unit

SLB-06

Concrete washout containment

Cut-top C-grade units that keep high-pH slurry off the ground and out of the storm drain. When the concrete hardens we take the tote back for HDPE recovery.

Movable, legal, recyclable

SLB-07

Compost tea brewers

A tote with a cut lid port sized for an air stone and paddle. Dedicated units only — you do not want fertilizer residue in a biological brew.

12 in access port · air stone ready

SLB-08

Custom cuts

Give us a height, an opening size or a sketch. If it can be cut from a tote and finished safely, we will quote it.

Your dimension, our saw

Provenance

Where the material comes from

Every build starts with a tote that failed liquid service for a reason we know.

A tote reaches the fabrication bay for one of three reasons: the bottle is stained past resale but structurally fine, the cage is too rough for a customer-facing sale, or the unit is a size the used market does not want.

None of those are safety problems. They are cosmetic and commercial problems — which makes cutting the tote into something useful strictly better than granulating it, both economically and environmentally.

For anything edible, the rule is absolute: F-grade stock with documented food-only prior contents, or we do not build it. That is not a marketing position, it is the only defensible way to sell someone a vegetable bed.

Safety

What we will not build

  • Food beds from unknown totes

    Herbicide and pesticide residues persist in HDPE. No exceptions, ever.

  • Uncapped cut edges

    Cut HDPE is genuinely sharp. Every edge we cut gets deburred and capped.

  • Load-bearing structures

    A cut tote has lost its top frame. It is not a platform, a step or a support.

  • Buried installations

    The bottle is not rated for soil pressure. Berm above ground instead.

  • Potable water from cut units

    An open vessel is not potable storage. Use a sealed rebottled tote.

Building a wicking bed that works in Texas

A wicking bed is a container with a water reservoir underneath the root zone and a wick of media connecting the two. Plants draw water upward as they need it, evaporation losses drop sharply, and a bed that would need daily watering in August needs it every third day.

The build sequence is straightforward: cut the tote to height, fit an internal barrier around 10 inches up, fill below the barrier with washed gravel, run a fill pipe down to the reservoir, drill an overflow at the barrier line so you cannot drown the roots, then fill above with a soil and compost blend.

We deliver them cut, drilled and barriered, ready for gravel and soil. What we cannot do is deliver the soil — that part is on you, and it is roughly 30 cubic feet per bed.

Why the cage is the best part

A horizontal split leaves each bed with half a welded steel cage attached. That is a trellis, a shade-cloth frame, a bird-net anchor and a hoop-house rib all in one, already galvanized and already bolted to the bed. Buying that as a separate product would cost more than the bed.

Where these go

Market farms and community gardens across Austin, school garden programmes, brewery spent-grain handling, and an increasing number of nurseries and growers who cascade their own totes from irrigation duty into beds when the bottle finally stains. That full cascade — chemical, water, planter, granulate — is the model this company was built around. It is explained end to end on the circular economy page.

Questions people actually ask

+Can I cut a tote myself?
You can, and people do. The reasons to let us do it are the edge and the tote choice: HDPE cut with a jigsaw leaves a genuinely dangerous edge that we deburr and cap, and we start from a tote whose prior contents we know are safe for what you are growing. A free tote from a Craigslist ad has neither of those.
+Are cut totes safe for growing food?
Only if the prior contents were food-grade or benign. We build food-growing conversions exclusively from F-grade stock and document what was in it. Never build a vegetable bed from a tote that held herbicide, pesticide or an unknown chemical — residues persist in HDPE.
+How much soil does a tote planter hold?
A horizontally split tote gives two beds of roughly 22 cubic feet each — about 16 bags of commercial garden soil per bed. A vertical wicking build holds around 30 cubic feet of media above a 40-gallon reservoir.
+Does the cage stay on?
Yes, that is half the point. On a horizontal split the cage becomes a ready-made trellis frame for tomatoes, beans or cucumbers. On a wicking build it carries the structural load once the bottle is opened.
+Do you deliver builds assembled?
Yes, on our standard routes. Cut units nest reasonably well so freight is not much worse than for whole totes. Austin metro is usually next business day once the cutting is done.

Related

Next

Quick reference

Numbers worth having open in another tab

The figures that come up in almost every conversation, whichever page you arrived on.

275 gallon · 1040 L

48×40×46

Tare
130 lb
Gross, water
2,425 lb
Stack full
2 high
Stock
Always in stock

330 gallon · 1250 L

48×40×53

Tare
160 lb
Gross, water
2,915 lb
Stack full
2 high
Stock
Always in stock

264 gallon · 1000 L

48×40×46

Tare
125 lb
Gross, water
2,325 lb
Stack full
2 high
Stock
Usually in stock

350 gallon · 1325 L

48×40×56

Tare
175 lb
Gross, water
3,095 lb
Stack full
2 high
Stock
Order in

Outlet thread

S60x6 — 60 mm coarse buttress. Not 2" NPT.

Grades published

N, R, F, A, B, C, X — applied at the wash bay.

Wash standards

W1 rinse through W4 caustic CIP at 160°F.

UN retest

Leakproofness 2.5 yrs, requalification 5 yrs.

From the yard notes

Longer reading on this

32 articles written by the people who wash, grade, weld and dispatch. No marketing copy in any of them.

All 32 articles

On the yard this week

Rows of used 275 gallon composite IBC totes stacked two high in an outdoor yard under a blue sky
Graded stock on the outdoor rows, stacked two high and waiting on a grade tag.
Wide view of a warehouse hall filled with reconditioned IBC totes on polished concrete
Covered inventory. What you see on the rack is what goes on your truck.

More answers

While you're here

Pulled from the full FAQ, which runs to forty-plus answers across buying, grades, food safety, sizes, selling, compliance, delivery and care.

Read the full FAQ

Where we are
3505 Montopolis Dr, Austin, TX 78744
Yard hours
Mon–Thu 7:30a–5p · Fri 7:30a–4p · Sat 8a–12p · Sun closed (Central Time)
Coverage
68 Texas counties on scheduled routes, from one Austin yard.

+Do you provide wash certificates?
Yes for W3, W4 and W5 washes: standard, temperature, detergent, sanitiser, date and operator. We retain copies for seven years.
+What do your grades mean?
N is new, R is rebottled, F is documented food grade, A is clean and presentable, B is sound with visible history, C is structurally sound but cosmetically rough, and X is material recovery only. Full definitions are on the grades page and they are applied by the person who washed the unit.
+What is your minimum order?
None for yard pickup. For delivery, small orders ride our consolidated routes with a modest freight line, and above about four totes it's usually absorbed into the unit price.
+Can I clean a tote myself?
For non-critical uses, yes — a proper three-stage rinse with agitation and full drain between stages does a lot. For food service, no: you need documented parameters and a caustic clean-in-place, which is what our W4 standard is for.
+Do you ship outside Texas?
Occasionally into Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico on volume orders. Further than that, a yard closer to you usually beats us on freight and we'll say so.

Sketch it. We'll cut it.

Standard builds or something you drew on the back of an invoice — describe it in the Message field and we'll quote the cut, the finish and the freight.

Get a quoteFabrication services