New uses for used materials

This weekend I plan to head on over to a neighbor's house to load up a ton of broken concrete.

They're tearing out an old patio and are eager to get rid of the stuff. I'm building a walkway and some raised garden beds, and I'm just as eager for cheap materials.

Our little exchange will keep a good chunk of trash out of the Johnson County landfill. Everybody wins.

I don't even know these neighbors - I found them through an online exchange called Freecycle, a free-form network of freely flowing junk.

For years, Freecycle groups around the country have been helping to keep usable items out of the landfill (www.freecycle.org). But that's small scale. What if I needed 2 million pounds of concrete? Wait for 1,000 neighbors to tear out patios? That wouldn't be very efficient.

Lucky for me, I could just call Mary Beth Stevenson over at the Iowa Waste Exchange.

The state-run Iowa Waste Exchange does what Freecycle does, only on an industrial scale. Since it began 20 years ago, the exchange has helped divert more than 2.6 million tons of waste from Iowa landfills.

Last fiscal year alone, the program helped divert close to 200,000 tons of material, saving suppliers more than $2.3 million in disposal costs. That doesn't even take into account the money saved on the user's end.

“It's pretty significant, actually,” Stevenson, who is the IWE Area Resource Specialist for Tama, Benton, Linn, Jones, Iowa and Johnson Counties, told me on Friday.

The service is free, and the materials usually are, too. Anyone can log on to the database and search available materials or put in requests. Stevenson and her peers around the state broker the exchanges, protecting everyone's privacy before the deal is struck.

And the diversity of materials available is astounding: everything from chemicals to construction materials to organic waste and more.

Need a few dozen office cubicles? Stevenson can help. Glass doors, countertops or carpet remnants? No problem. The exchange has a little of everything, including kitchen sinks. You can find a current list here: https://programs.

iowadnr.gov/iwe/

Stevenson's been recruiting local businesses into the exchange since starting her job last fall but said there's still plenty of room for growth.

“I think people are starting to realize they can find a beneficial reuse for their material and save a lot of money,” she said.

A win-win-win, when you consider the environmental impact, too.

That's triple smart.

Comments: (319) 339-3154;

jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com