Got Green?
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.
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BoKlok is a groundbreaking new concept to housing that involves providing space-saving, functional and high-quality properties at a price that enables as many people as possible to afford a comfortable home.
My husband Henrik and I bought this sailboat earlier this year, an old Catalina 25 that we’re fixing up. He’s Swedish, I have history in Louisiana, we may name it Swedish Gumbo. It’s looking pretty good and my husband’s teaching me to sail. I grew up with boats so I work the tiller pretty well (do I look cute or what?!) but the lines and sails confuse me. I’m learning to tack now. The last time we went out the thought crossed my mind that real estate in Seattle is a lot like sailing. Both require attention to detail and patience, both are exciting and maddening, both cost a lot of money and licenses, changes happen, and when there’s no wind (or buyers) nothing moves.
These twiggy vegetables are Seabeans. They’re also known as salicornia, glasswort and beach asparagus. They grow on beaches and in marshes and are generally available during the summer (seabeans used to be burned and the ashes used as soda for making glass and soap.) They have a flavor reminiscent of a day spent at the ocean — salty, briny and the slightest bit vegetal with a bit of a crunch. So far we’ve found them good tossed in salads and as side dishes. Blanch them to remove some of the salt.
These are vegetables that Dr. Seuss would surely love. Fiddlehead Ferns. They’re only available for a short time in Spring. It was a little weird the first time I ate Fiddleheads, they look so strange, but they were delicious. I sautéed them in olive oil and fresh crushed garlic and served them hot. I was also told they’re good on the grill brushed with a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and lime or lemon juice, and since we’re all about the “Q” that will be how I cook the next batch (if I can get more this year.) Traditionally, fiddleheads are served with butter or oil and seasoning. Cooked with garlic and/or bacon they develop a more complex flavor. They’re supposed to be very good with morel mushrooms, too.
These are garlic curls also known as scapes. They’re the tender flower stalks that grows out of the middle of hardneck garlic before the garlic below is full grown. They break these off so that the plant can devote its growing energy into the storage bulb and not into making flowers and seeds. The garlic curl season is only about three weeks long. We saw them last week and I said, “Let’s finish our once-around and then come back and buy a bunch.” Well the Farmers Market is worse than Costco. If you see something you want you better get it right then because when you go back it’ll be gone. Sure enough, we went back and not 15 seconds earlier a gentleman (whom I refer to as the garlic thief) bought ALL the garlic curls! I wanted to hunt him down. Well last Sunday we arrived earlier and marched straight to the lady who sells the garlic curls and bought two bunches. It’s sad they’ll only be around another week or two, I love them. Garlic curl pesto seems to be a popular recipe and they’re also good cooked on meats and sautéed with oil and seasoning. Sautéed they’re crunchy. I’m going to see what happens when they’re steamed. They have a mild smell and flavor and they’re smooth to touch.
Each month I feature a different non-profit participating in my Community Partnership Program. When a client hires me to help them sell or buy a property, I donate an amount equal to 10% of my commission to the non-profit of their choice in their name. I’ve established strong relationships with many different non-profits and continue to work diligently spreading the word about this wonderful opportunity. I love supporting non-profits in this way.
Since 1997 Jay Shafer has been living in houses smaller than some people’s bathrooms. He called the first of his little hand built houses Tumbleweed. Jay’s decision to inhabit just 100 square feet came from some concerns he had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment and because he just did not want to maintain a lot of unused space. In 2004 he sold Tumbleweed and built the 70 square foot structure he lives in today. He calls his new place Weebee or XS House (as in “extra small”) and he is offering all of us several models of small homes that he delivers for a price per mile. If you need more space, you can attach several small modular models together.
