At a time of rising lumber costs and diminishing quality, a little Cortes Island business has been demonstrating how the materials from existing houses can be reused in a variety of ways. 

“We call our business Creative Deconstruction. We take apart buildings by hand and sell the building materials that are still in good condition to people who are building. We also try to process whatever can’t be reused in ways that are also healthy,” explained Max Thaysen.

On their website there are photos of beams and other lumber, particle board, sheet roofing, a metal railing, and hardware, as well as building a garage, chairs and a table. 

“We make a little bit of firewood from wood that is clean and can’t be reused in various ways.  A little bit of stuff still ends up going to the landfill.” 

“Me and Travis Powiak run this business together and we’ve been operating for five or six years. We’ve probably taken apart 10 house sized buildings over that time, and some smaller stuff.” 

“We have a little storage yard here and something like three quarters of the material we get doesn’t even come back here. It goes straight to somebody’s building site, which is really convenient because it reduces the shipping and handling and so reduces costs for us and costs for the customer.”

“It’s mostly been going to our friends building houses for themselves. This is also how I’ve built my house and I think that we’ve contributed to the construction of probably 10 houses around Cortes.” 

“Its always been a really special part of our business that we’ve provided really great quality materials to people who are building houses, and they saved a bunch of money by shopping with us. And so we contributed to affordable housing on Cortes Island as one of the sort of goals of our work. It’s super gratifying to have a quadruple bottom line.”

“We have a small inventory remaining and found that it’s a profitable business. We save people money on building materials while paying ourselves a decent wage.” 

“It’s been a great little business. I have tried to spread it a little bit by offering free advice to people in other communities who want to start up a similar business. It is such a no-brainer to have a combination of economic development and waste diversion. It’s just crazy to not be doing this on a much bigger scale everywhere when we can make jobs and save money  on waste processing and save money on buying used building material or buying building materials.”

“Me and my business partner, Travis Powiak, had a meeting with Billie Taylor, who owns the Boneyard Reusery, just south of Mansons. She has been doing a lot of really awesome work diverting things from the landfill and recycling all kinds of things. So we’ve been figuring out how to partner up and passing on some of the work that we get to her. We’ll see how that evolves.”

CC: Are there any regulations about how to dispose of materials from old houses?

MT: “Right now we have laws that make it illegal to burn buildings down. You cannot burn any plastic, tar paper, insulation or any painted wood in British Columbia.  The only thing that’s legal to burn is clean lumber.” 

“You can’t just burn anywhere. You have to be, I think it’s 500 meters, half a kilometer from the nearest house.” 

“Those are really good regulations. They’ve been developed for a good purpose because people are being poisoned and the environment is being poisoned by a lot of this burning, and it still happens on Cortes.”

“I think those are good regulations that we should be observing on Cortes.” 

“How we can make businesses like mine work more is by enforcing the law, educating people about the law, spreading awareness about the law and holding each other accountable.” 

CC: Are there any other ways that community could support a business like this?

MT: “Victoria has passed a deconstruction bylaw, a requirement that a certain proportion of every demolition be recycled in the ways that we’ve been doing. I think in Victoria, the way it’s working out is you need a demolition permit, similar to  before you build, you have to get a permit. As part of that, they require  that you post a bond and you only get that bond back if you demonstrate that a certain portion of the building was recycled. Something like that would be really helpful.” 

See also: A regional model: free stores and other waste reducing facilities

Thaysen said just letting people know that an option like Creative Deconstruction exists would also be a great help.

Top image credit: Building a roof over a trailer – courtesy Creative Reconstruction website

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