Part Four of a Series

This series of informational blog posts come from a document Mike,Caesandra and Kevin created to help orient new Buffalo ReUse board members to our mission,vision,values and the actual history of our organization. Earlier parts: One Two Three

Green Demolition Defined

Yes, we take down houses, and since our inception we’ve demolished close to 35 structures, including houses, as large as 9,000 square feet, barns, garages and commercial buildings. We’ve implemented a technique, created by David Bennink of ReUse Consulting, called hybrid deconstruction. This type of demolition is also better known as “green demolition”.

Incorporating a 10,000-pound all-terrain forklift to complement skilled and unskilled human labor, has proved to be more efficient, cost-effective, and economically practical approach to demolition that is far superior to hand deconstruction. The focus of our demolition, and what separates our operation from the others doing work in the City of Buffalo, is our focus on ReUse and Recycling. We can effectively reclaim up to 50% of the tonnage of a house that would have otherwise been discarded. The material ends up at the ReSource, and the sales of material supports our mission.

Demolition projects are strictly fee-for-service. We do not offer “free demolition service” in exchange for the material. I wish we could. I wish the price of building materials at Home Depot, accurately reflected the TRUE costs of producing these products, including the costs to clean up and repair all the environmental destruction created by the production of these materials. However, as you all probably know, our retail costs for durable goods RARELY include such costs and therefore are very inexpensive. These prices influence behaviors and create the “throw away attitudes” of our culture. Though we can’t offer our services for free, we are trying to be “dollar for dollar”, competitive with traditional demolition. We can then offer our clients a tax-deductible donation for the value of all the materials we save from a house, whether it be a one clay brick that retails for a $0.25 or a $3,000 oak mantle. These donations are appraised by our ReUse consultant, as required by federal law for donations that exceed $5,000. Clients then list this donation as an itemized deduction for a non-cash charitable contribution. David Bennink, has been consulting with the IRS for over 15 years and has been performing this process. It’s completely legitimate and the tax deduction often provides the added incentive necessary to convince clients to hire Buffalo ReUse over a traditional demolition contractor.

Salvage Services Defined

In addition to whole building green demolition, we also collaborate with other demolition contractors to salvage buildings that will soon be demolished by traditional means. Most demolition contractors have been excited to collaborate with us, because ultimately anything that we divert from the landfill translates, into lower disposal rates for them. It would be great if this was a larger incentive, but unfortunately disposal rates are so low in Western New York that a ton of diversion only “saves” most demolition contractors $25 at the landfill. Compare this to Seattle and New Jersey where disposal rates are over $100/ton. The low cost of disposal is probably the largest obstacles we have to encouraging more people to choose our services.

Donations

Finally, we also obtain materials through donations from homeowners and contractors. We are working diligently to procure more donations from contractors and homeowners and view material acquisition as critical to our ability to increase sales at the ReSource. Sales have steadily increased since we initiated sales in the Spring of 2007 and certainly since we began full-time in May 2008. Now sales are fairly consistent at $4 – $5,000 per week. We’d like to increase this weekly total to $7,500, but there is a direct relationship between material acquisition and sales. If we get a lot of NEW material in the store, we sell a lot of that new material that week and consequently our sales increase. Ironically, in a City with thousands of vacant houses, material acquisition is still one of our largest challenges. We are creating good relationships with demolition contractors, creating great PR to inform and advise the public; and getting a steady stream of customers each day; but there is still room to grow. We’ll talk about growth in finances.

What I’ve discussed is largely how we acquire materials and sell them. It makes sense that we divert reusable materials from the landfill and make it available to people in need. It makes sense that if there is a way to dismantle a house and save lumber that it should be implemented. For almost two years, we’ve been implementing deconstruction, salvage, and sales, demonstrating and proving that it can be done here in Buffalo. Communicating to the world that it can work. Yes, there have been challenges and we need to continue to innovate so that what we believe should be happening, continues to happen.

When we were first getting started, I used to say, “you gotta start the engine, before you can drive the car.” In many ways, our salvage and green demolition field services (the engine), combined with the ReSource (the transmission), provide the power for what we ultimatley hope will happen, and that is that we “regenerate neighborhoods and empower communities.” You can tear down 10,000 houses and sell a bunch of material, but until we support livable neighborhoods and address the many social challenges that plague those neighborhoods, not many folks are going to move back to Buffalo and the folks that live here will continue to struggle. This is the theory behind our other programs. The BAR (Buffalo Action for Revitalization) Program and the ReBEL Corps (Buffalo Eco Leaders) Program, are the programs that were conceived during our founding year in 2007 to address both the challenges of the physical environment and the challenges of our social environment. You’ll read in Caesandra’s report below that the BAR Program is designed to create new and regenerated green spaces with the collaborative energy of neighborhood residents and committed volunteers. We’ve planted trees, initiated community gardens, and are enlivening the neighborhood with action. By doing so, more people get involved not only in beautification, but in the production of food.