Gleaning for Good Works
“The contractors all had garages full of stuff left over from their jobs, and the ministers had people they were working with, trying to get some job training and get back on their feet,” Magel explains.
Bud’s operates from a modest 20,000 ft² warehouse, but over the years has generated enough money to spin off a thrift store specializing in baby items, a cleaning service, a garage that repairs donated cars and offers them to low-income people, a mattress-recycling program and a carpentry shop specializing in cabinets and wine racks.
Click photo to enlargeMagel says stone shops are definitely among Bud’s donors.
“We partner with everyone from the small fabrication shops to the distributors that have showrooms full of slabs and tile, and everyone in between,” he says. “We also partner with the guys who pull out countertops that are still in fine shape.”
He mentions particularly a donation earlier this year that brought Bud’s more than 80 slabs in a mix of marble, granite and DuPont Zodiaq®.
“Sometimes people will even buy cracked stuff,” Magel says. “They can turn it into a coffee table or a cutting block. Of course, we love new stuff; but, with granite, even broken stuff is good. The only thing we don’t take is used tile with the grout on it. There isn’t a market for that.”
Helping Bud’s, he adds, is that the operation has a person, dedicated to the donation side of the business, constantly calling on people in the trades to make them aware of its program.
For Milwaukee’s Community Warehouse, the role of procurement specialist is filled by Ray Curtiss, who says his job with the organization is “building relationships to get product donated.”
Community Warehouse serves organizations and individuals in Milwaukee’s inner city; while it will accept some used items (he mentions a hotel’s worth of 27” television sets and the armoires in which they sat), some 98 percent of what it accepts is new.
While a lot of the materials have gone to help owners improve their properties at a low cost, Community Warehouse is also concerned with job creation and teaching people skills that can then help them become stable members of the workforce. For that reason, donated stone pieces are turned into pavers, and a large donation of door slabs led the organization into manufacturing pre-hung doors.
Still waiting to get off the ground is a plan to begin making cabinets for vanities.
“In the inner city, the homes are smaller that what most companies are making cabinets for today,” says Curtiss. “This way, we can take what’s been donated, provide a service and also make a product that our members can use.”
And, of course, because they’re smaller, the tops could possibly be made from scraps that are too small for typical fabrication jobs.
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
Out on the West Coast, it’s probably not surprising that the San Mateo, Calif.-based Whole House Building Supply & Storage has a big emphasis on recycling. Paul Gardner, its founder, says he was the kid always nagging his parents to turn off the lights and recycle.
Later, as a carpenter and then a contractor, he grew so concerned about the building materials going to landfills that he started The Recycled Materials Newsletter, a shopper-type publication, more than 20 years ago.
A real epiphany occurred when he won the bid to demolish a wing of an old house.
“We did one thing that was pretty unusual for the time,” Gardner says. “I held a sale at the house before I tore it down. I advertised the sale in my newsletter and was able to sell the bricks in the chimney before I even demolished the chimney. I sold a lot of the shingles off the roof. I sold most of the hardwood flooring, and all these French windows.”
Gardner realized he could make a living demolishing buildings; presales went well, but he soon recognized that he needed a place to hold unsold items for future sale. After securing warehouse space, he chose to affiliate the operation with an organization in East Palo Alto, Calif., working on affordable housing in the East Bay to provide donors the tax break available for those giving to a 501c3 nonprofit.
Sadly, with so many contractors downsizing or going out of business, donations have been brisk.
