Number of words: 754<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Damon Carson has one of the more interesting inboxes in America. On any given day, from his office in Denver, Colorado, he will field myriad inquiries from people looking to unload stuff. We\u2019re not talking about the odd consumer trying to dispense with an old refrigerator, or a bagful of out-of-fashion clothing. Picture instead large companies\u2014sometimes multinational corporations\u2014looking to unload massive, metric-ton amounts of stuff, maybe for a price, maybe for free. Stuff that has no clear value, no immediately apparent afterlife, no clear end-user. Stuff that\u2019s otherwise on a fast-track to the landfill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a recent conversation, Carson relayed a sampling of what had come across the transom in just a few days last autumn. There was the offer to pick up surplus rolls of the fabric used to cover domed sports stadiums. There was some 20,000 kilograms of barium sulfate (formulated for lead-acid batteries) that had an iron content too high for the manufacturer\u2019s specs. There were 28 pallet-loads of plastic bins from a discount retailer. And a major outdoor recreation company wanted to know if he was interested in nearly 800 pounds\u2019 worth of blue rope\u2014each 33.5 inches long\u2014which were no longer needed to make the handles on coolers. The cost of shipping? Covered by the manufacturer. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of a tree-hugging company,\u201d he explained. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to just throw it away. Nor should they. Because it has value.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question of what<\/em> value, and to whom<\/em>, is the inchoate algebra that animates Carson\u2019s days. Call him, as he calls himself, a \u201cwaste speculator\u201d or \u201cmaterials gambler.\u201d A yenta<\/em> of the complex, never-ending waste stream of contemporary capitalism, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people. \u201cI\u2019m just betting that somewhere in America, I can find a home for 8,000 33.5-inch pieces of rope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For nearly a decade, Carson\u2019s company, RepurposedMaterials<\/a>, has been casting these wagers. He\u2019s not looking to recycle the stuff he gets\u2014breaking it down to make something new\u2014but rather finding new homes for castoff goods in their original forms. He has his staples. He has miles of used firehose, for example, that no longer reliably handles water at high pressure but does work as a protective \u201cbumper\u201d for boat docks, among other uses. Rubber conveyor belts, past their prime on the factory floor, become \u201cballistic curtains\u201d in gun ranges. The sturdy bristles from street-sweepers find their way into fields, where they serve as back-scratchers for livestock. (Customers for this include Ted Turner, who owns the most bison in the US.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then, every week or so, something new will come in that he knows nothing about. \u201cI just got a bunch of ceramic paper,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never even heard of ceramic paper.\u201d For the record, it\u2019s a thin, fire-resistant insulator made from high-purity alumina silicate, used as heat-shielding in aircraft insulation, lining kilns, and other industrial processes. The person who will know what to do with a bunch of ceramic paper is probably the one who knew what it was for in the first place. And so Carson either needs to find that person, or to try to suss out possible uses for the material\u2014often through his network of clients. If capitalism, in the economist Joseph Schumpeter\u2019s famous phrase, is the act of \u201ccreative destruction,\u201d one that isn\u2019t particularly good at dealing with the wreckage it leaves in its wake, Carson is trafficking in creative repurposing. He wades into the vast, almost unknowable realm of the global production of things <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is particularly fertile territory in the US. \u201cWe produce the most waste per person of any country in the world,\u201d notes Jenna Jambeck, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia. In 2018, the most recent year for which figures are available, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated the size of the country\u2019s municipal solid waste stream at 292.4 million tons<\/a>, roughly 4.9 pounds per person per day. The total is more than twice what it was in 1960. But Jambeck points out that\u2019s far exceeded by industrial waste, castoffs from everything from manufacturing to agriculture. This murkier stream is far harder to track, for various reasons, but a broad spectrum of American industrial facilities create and cast off approximately 7.6 billion tons of industrial solid waste annually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For the moment, Carson\u2019s unique business, which finds new lives for millions of pounds of refuse every year, is the only thing standing between that batch of ceramic paper and the landfill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Excerpted from<\/em> https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/story\/environment\/creative-reuse-commercial-waste-master\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"