With the current economic struggles, people are looking for ways to reduce their cost of living. Many are turning to "greener" products, using environmentally friendly goods that are more energy- and cost-efficient. Green products are able to be recycled, reused or are easily decomposed when thrown away. However, building deconstruction may not be the first thing to come to mind when thinking green.
Ted Reiff developed The ReUse People in 1993 as a company that focuses on the deconstruction of buildings, homes and other structures. The goal of the non-profit organization is to salvage materials from these dilapidated homes, buildings and structures in and around cities. The materials obtained from the projects are then reused, recycled or sold on the marketplace. When a structure is donated to a deconstruction crew, they are able to salvage 85 percent of the materials in the structures.
Reiff said that it was hard to get attention at first. The ReUse People had only one contractor when they first began 16 years ago.
"We were lucky in the second year to get five projects, and three of them were free," Reiff said.
Since 2004, they have trained 50 contractors, and completed over 250 projects last year, none of which were free. Reiff believes that the increase in customers stems from the growing interest in the green movement throughout the nation.
"It really depends on the awareness and the intelligence of the people about salvaging the materials and re-using things," Reiff said. "Those people understand the value in doing this."
However, the cost of hiring a deconstruction company can be double or triple the cost of the average demolition crew. As an incentive through the federal government, the owners of donated structures receive a tax cut. The cut is based on the value of materials and the donor's tax bracket. Reiff said that the typical clients are upper-middle class and above because they end up saving money in the end. While this works for higher tax brackets, he said that lower income houses aren't able to afford deconstruction. To make the materials available to those individuals, The ReUse People donate reusable items to Habitat for Humanity across much of the nation.
The deconstruction program also faces another challenge when compared to demolition. For the average two-story home, it would take a deconstruction crew of 10 people seven to 10 days to finish dismantling and salvaging the materials. With demolition, it would only take one or two days to take down the same house with one or two people on machinery. This is also a factor in the different expense rates between the two approaches.
The ReUse People are rapidly expanding as they continue deconstruction training across the nation. In October, Reiff came to Muncie where 11 people were trained in two 14-day sessions on deconstruction. During this time, they removed two buildings. Reiff also trained now certified deconstruction contractors Tyler Kelsey, a Ball State architecture graduate and owner of Closed Loop Deconstruction, and Brook Linton, owner of Solid State carpentry. The two are now area managers for The ReUse People.
Linton is currently leading in deconstruction programs in Muncie, and he hired the trainees to begin working with him.
"I would like to see this staying locally and benefiting the community," Linton said.
Gretchen Cheesman, Administrator of the Unsafe Building Authority in Muncie, has been working with Kelsey and Linton to identify houses and buildings in the area that can be deconstructed and salvaged rather than demolished.
Stimulus packages through the federal government have helped keep this program going in Muncie. Kelsey said he hopes it continues to bring jobs into the community, because there is still a significant number of homes and buildings that need to be taken down. Each year, Muncie receives $100,000 to go toward the removal of houses, Cheesman said.
"We usually tear down 20 to 25 houses a year," Cheesman said.
With only 10 crew members, the deconstruction team can only do one house at a time, but Kelsey said that he would like to see additional crews to allow work on multiple houses.
"There are a lot of good materials in those houses, but you're never going to get those materials out if you just crunch it up with an excavator and haul it off to a landfill," Cheesman said.
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