Old Materials Reimagined in Omaha Designer Challenge

Westroads Mall and Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Omaha have teamed up on a Designer Challenge. Check out a sample of the design vignettes. For every vote by text by July 11, Westroads Mall is donating $1 to Habitat for Humanity. The winning design will be revealed on the Westroads Mall Facebook page on July 11, 2012.

InterfaceFLOR + PlanetReuse = Great Carpet Reuse Opportunity

Q. What do you get when you connect a forward thinking, global carpet manufacturer committed to environmental preservation with a national broker of reclaimed building material??

A. An outstanding opportunity to push beyond standard recycling with a more sustainable solution.

Over the past few months a partnership between PlanetReuse and InterfaceFLOR has saved tons of carpet tile from the landfill and delivered it to reuse centers across the country.

We’d like to thank Mikhail Davis and the InterfaceFLOR team for a great launch and successful pilot and for supporting carpet reuse opportunities.

Here are some highlights from Mikhail's recent blog post.

"This winter, a partnership with one of the national experts in building product reuse has given us a new tool to tackle tough projects for which our recycling system has had no good solution. The pilot project, working with Nathan Benjamin, Founder of PlanetReuse, has already repurposed more old carpet tile in the first quarter of 2012 that we did in all of 2011."

"What PlanetReuse adds is access to the national community of local building product reuse stores, which has revealed a very interesting fact to us: there exists a sizable aftermarket nationally for used carpet tile for use in multipurpose areas like entryways, basements and garages.

Successful projects in our pilot with PlanetReuse include moving several full truckloads of old competitor polyurethane tile into reuse stores in Denver and Kansas City, where it is selling well. It also turns out that the durable bitumen-backed Graphlar tiles, even after being used in a retail setting, are still sought after by homeowners for use in entryways and garages."

Thank you Mikhail.

The Team at PlanetReuse looks forward to diverting many more tons of carpet tile and to opportunities for facilitating the reuse of other building materials as well.