SEATTLE AVENUE

The RE Store was founded in 1993 by the non-profit organization RE Sources for Sustainable Communities to address the growing problem of wasteful disposal of useable building materials, most of which were buried in the local landfill. The RE Store provides an alternative to dumping those materials.

In addition to giving old materials new life, The non-profit RE Store also saves homeowners, contractors, and business owners the burden of wasting useful, beautiful, and unique items.  Since its inception, The RE Store has turned building material waste into a viable sustainable business venture that diverts close to 3,000,000 pounds of waste per year from needless disposal while employing over 30 people.

At their website you can learn about them, how they can help you and how you can help them, take a workshop, get involved in various sustainable activities and find links to resources, networks, and information.

The RE Store’s success is based on a winning formula: They save money for homeowners, contractors, and business owners on disposal costs, while providing high quality building materials at discounted prices. This creates jobs and opportunities for reuse, education, and innovation at every step of the process.

They carry quality building and home improvement materials at prices that are up to 50% off of new items. They also offer a wide variety of services including pickups, salvage, and whole building deconstruction. Located in Bellingham and Seattle, with a fleet of trucks that respond throughout western Washington, The RE Store is a leader in the used building materials industry, a valued community service, and a winner of local, state, and national awards.

The Bad News

• The demolition of a modest 2,000 square foot house generates a mountain of trash — 127 tons!
• 124 million tons of construction debris is buried in landfills every year. That is enough debris to build a wall about 30 feet high and 30 feet thick around the entire coast of the continental United States (4,993 miles).
• 200,000 buildings are demolished in the U.S. each year. Up to 50% of each building is salvagable and reusable. Another 45% is recyclable into another usable form.
• Each year the United States buries about 33 million tons of wood related construction and demolition debris in our landfills. As anaerobic microorganisms decompose this wood, it will release about 5 million tons of carbon equivalent in the form of methane gas. This is equivalent to the yearly emissions of 3,736,000 passenger cars.
• Homes in the U.S. are 38 percent larger in 2002 than in 1975, but house less people per household.
• 50 percent of consumed materials (globally) are used in construction and remodeling.

The Good News

• Did you know that re-using the lumber from just one house (2,000 square feet) saves 33 mature trees?
• For every ton of wood that is reused, we avoid creating 60 pounds of greenhouse gasses.
• Average annual materials saved by REStore from landfills — over 2,500,000 pounds
• Number of job sites visited by RE Store per year — over 1100
• RE Store pickups completed per year — over 750
• RE Store’s first year of operation - 1993
• 35 local jobs are directly created by The RE Store (Bellingham & Seattle)
• Over 80,000 customers annually visit their two stores in Bellingham & Seattle.

An average home contains about 4,700 pounds of steel and 770 pounds of recyclable plastics. If carefully deconstructed, these materials could be recycled into new products with a net savings (or preservation of embodied energy) of 59 million Btus.