Two trucks. One wash bay.
A weird amount of optimism.
IBC Reconditioned started in 2014 in a 4,800-square-foot rented bay off Glory Road in Green Bay. Today we run three lines, a fleet of nine, and a yard you could land a helicopter on. Same idea throughout: a good tote deserves another life.
Same-day reply.
Every form goes straight to a human in Green Bay — no chatbots, no offshore desks. Mon–Fri responses within four working hours.
What started as a salvage hunch.
A short, semi-chronological tour of how the yard got where it is.
2014 · The founding
Co-founders Mara Quinn and Theo Larsson met at a chemical distributor where they watched perfectly good IBC totes get torch-cut and dumped because no one had figured out the reverse logistics. They quit, leased a bay, bought a used hot-water pressure washer, and started knocking on the same warehouse doors they’d been delivering to weeks earlier.
2016 · The first food-grade line
A regional honey co-op asked if we could segregate a clean line for food applications. We built one, got our first food-contact compliance review, and discovered that a quarter of every truckload of “industrial” empties we’d been buying was actually never used for anything more aggressive than corn syrup.
2018 · Glory Road yard
Outgrew the rental and bought the current 11.2-acre lot at 1140 Glory Rd. The previous tenant had been a paving contractor; the asphalt mountains took six months to clear and now form the gravel under the southern storage rows.
2020 · The pandemic year
Demand for sanitizer and industrial alcohols exploded; usable IBCs were briefly the most-wanted container in North America. We hand-cleared every tote of our reserve inventory in three weeks and ran a third shift for eleven months. The team got bigger. The wash bay got faster.
2023 · Closed-loop water
Installed our reverse-osmosis recapture system. We now reuse roughly 84% of the water that touches an interior wash, including the caustic concentrate. That single project cut our per-tote process-water footprint by more than half.
2026 · Today
Three wash lines, nine trucks, two repurposing benches, and 34 people from Brown, Outagamie, and Kewaunee counties. We’re still owned by the people who started it.
“If you treat used totes as garbage that hasn’t reached the dump yet, you’ll run a salvage yard. If you treat them as hardware that’s halfway through its working life, you run a logistics company. We picked the second one.”— Mara Quinn, co-founder
Keep reading
What twelve years actually adds up to.
The people who answer the email.
We are still owned and operated by the two people who started the company. Three more leads keep the yard, the line, and the trucks running. None of us are far from the work. You will see most of us in steel toes some of the time.
The paperwork behind the practice.
Hazmat liquid IBC certification
Every reconditioned tote retains its original UN packaging mark and is re-leak-tested.
Food-contact compliance
Replacement gaskets used on our food line are NSF-certified for direct food contact.
B-Corp certification (in renewal)
Second triennial verification underway, projected close Q3 2026.
Quality management
Annual surveillance audits clean since 2019. Recertification 2027.
Small-Quantity Generator
Compliant handling of incidental hazardous residues at intake.
Hazmat employee training
All operators current on DOT Hazmat training as of last refresh.
Eleven years, four growth phases, one stubborn idea.
“We’ve been buying reconditioned 275-gal totes from IBC Reconditioned since 2017. Zero returns, zero contamination, full chain-of-custody on every invoice. They’ve earned the lock-in.Procurement Director · Regional food ingredient distributor · IL
“They picked up 64 used totes from our parking lot in two days, wrote a check on the dock, and we never saw them piled up against a wall again. That alone is worth the relationship.Plant Manager · Adhesive manufacturer · MN
“The transparency is what sold us. We toured the wash line, watched a tote come through, and signed a standing order on the way back to the car.Operations Lead · Specialty chemical co-packer · WI
“Their food line is the only reconditioner we trust for our edible-oil program. The segregation is real, not theatrical.QA Director · Co-packer · IA
Visit us in Green Bay.
Walk-throughs welcome during business hours. Bring questions. Bring boots.