“Why be wasteful?”
Environmental issues make headlines daily. Issues like green house gas production, melting polar ice caps, oil consumption, and global warming are hotly debated among leading scientists, politicians, and journalists. While we don’t have the answers to these pressing environmental issues, we at Overshiner Remodeling & Renovation are doing what we can to reduce our impact on the environment.
The construction industry is hard on the environment. Construction of new buildings requires cutting down trees, clearing land, using large amounts of natural resources, and producing copious amounts of waste. Nearly 40% of garbage dumped in landfills each year is a byproduct of the construction industry.
Our approach is to ask “Why be wasteful?” We take a multi-faceted approach to this question looking at ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, and research.
We work to reduce waste by using materials efficiently and effectively. Toward this end, we find that we are consistently producing less waste than industry most standards. We are working to reduce our use of fossil fuels by planning our jobs well to reduce unnecessary trips for materials and supplies. We also use bicycle transportation when we can. We have a small bicycle/job trailer that we use in warm weather for short trips.
We often have scrap materials such as nails, lumber scraps, old ceiling fans, cabinets, countertops, doors, windows, screens, paint, many things that are still functional but unwanted. We try to reuse these materials, instead of dumping them in a landfill. We reuse what we can for projects around our home (eg. our kid’s clubhouse). We give materials to friends and family who can use them. We donate items to Habitat for Humanity and/or Freecycle. Always looking for new ways to give old items new life, we are starting a new endeavor making furniture out of scrap and other old materials (more on this soon).
On job sites, we keep recycling bags available so we can recycle drink and food containers. We recycle scrap metals. We work with interested homeowners to recycle other building materials such as shingles.
We are researching alternative and renewable building materials, such as bamboo and cork flooring, and straw bale construction. We are also researching green power sources like solar, and more efficient heating and cooling systems. Researching the latest green materials and methods enables us to help our customers make ecologically sound choices on their remodeling and renovation projects.
By taking small steps each day, we continue searching for new ways to reduce our environmental impact always asking ourselves “Why be wasteful?”